


Beer and Band-aids

by hotnuts



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: AU, Alcohol, Alternate Universe, Angst, Artist Zayn, Blood, Drugs, Falling In Love, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M, Porn With Plot, Sexual Tension, Slow Build, Smoking, Tattoos, Unrequited Love, Violence, dick tattoos, it's not as dark as the tags are making it seem, side larry - Freeform, street au, ziall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-22
Updated: 2013-07-29
Packaged: 2017-12-03 07:03:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 37,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/695541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotnuts/pseuds/hotnuts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Niall shoves his numbing hands deeper inside the warmth of his hoodie, biting the cold back with chapped lips and shaking limbs. He hums to keep his anxiety at bay, small noises in the form of some drowned out Justin Bieber tune he hasn't been able to get out of his head since he left Ireland. </p><p>Or, that one ziall street au where Zayn is a misunderstood artist, Niall is the cute Irishman who shouldn't be walking around London at night and they fall in love with each other over a lot of alcohol, bruises and angst.<br/>Also Louis is a sassy pub-owner with a hipster boyfriend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> [Love me even more](http://www.tea-and-feels.tumblr.com/)

            Niall shoves his numbing hands deeper inside the warmth of his hoodie, biting the cold back with chapped lips and shaking limbs. He hums to keep his anxiety at bay, small noises in the form of some drowned out Justin Bieber tune he hasn't been able to get out of his head since he left Ireland.

He's homesick as hell, but besides nights like these when he has to walk through muggy off streets of London alone, he's really glad he made the choice to move to England.

Everything was bigger here, more people, more noise- something Niall could definitely get used to. London life was considered great, and many people he’d knew from his hometown came here after graduating high school to find better work, or run away from the same boring landscape. So when he had personally gotten an offer to both finish college and work at his friend Louis' pub part time, he took it without a second thought.

Thinking back on that though- he really should've looked into the whole thing a bit deeper before saying goodbye to all his family and then literally jumping onto the next plane he could find to the bustling city. It maybe wasn’t the smartest choice.

Maybe he could've at least acted on what his parents has suggested, study the area a bit better, learn about the barley-there cultural difference.  Because really, the biggest problem he's encountered so far was that Louis’ idea of 'a little rough around the edges' was drastically different then his own.

After living here a few days, he honestly had to give credit to the sassy little brunet. Louis didn't look equiped to run a pub in one of the toughest parts of London, but man did he pull it off easily.

The first time he gets a taste of what he had gotten himself into is exactly the day after he had gotten off the plane and settled into his flat. He'd been torn from unpacking his boxes and tugged around town in an inpromtu tour- courtisy of an ecstatic Louis.

When he first saw a fight break out, he had whipped his phone out in seconds, nervous fingers all ready to dial the police. Until Louis, that dick, had just decided to go and laugh it off, shoving Niall's phone back in his pocket as if it was no big deal that there could possibly be someone dying less then ten meters in front of them. 

"Wait Niall, this is a great learning opportunity for you!" Louis had said, pointing back over to where the tattooed men had already been pulling off one another, the argument obviously rescinded to no more than angry yelling and snarls.  

 “See, around here fights are common- and dangerous. It’s best if a pure little thing like you learns to stay away from them. kay?” Louis smiled. Niall decided to shrug it off and made plans to follow his advice.

::

          Now, it being almost a month later, he's settled down he doesn't pay much mind to the constant drunken rifts on the streets. At Louis' pub he mixes drinks and cleans tables, listening to arguments and learning at what point it’s best to casually make himself disappear and not get involved like he would have back at home.

And of course, at night when he starts hearing gun shots and becomes just a little to freaked about walking home alone he can usually get Louis to drive him back on his badass bike because Louis is nice like that and understands how Niall is still a little generally freaked out from the sudden change in peace levels.

However, on this particular night, Louis is off at his boyfriend's house and Niall has to walk back to his flat alone.

He likes Harry a lot sure, becoming quite acquainted with the curly haired hipster since Harry insists on being glued to Louis' side at all times (and vice versa.)

Harry will usually joke around with Niall over beers after Niall's shift, when they're waiting for Louis to be done capping the alcohol- because apparently he doesn't trust Niall with that one yet.

So of course, he's great friends with the boy, except tonight. Tonight he's just a little pissed at Harry for taking away the usual Louis-shaped safeguard that escorts him around London this late at night.

He's walked alone before sure, but never later than ten- it being almost one am at the moment. He should've just crashed on Louis' couch, in his little flat above the bar.

But he has morning classes and somehow convinced himself that he really needs a good few hours in his own bed; the bed that was a little more than half a mile away if he was reading the street signs correctly.

He pushes his head down and tries to ignore the shouts around him, he knows it's a bad idea to walk alone now that he's actually outside. With all the drunken laughter and swaying bodies littering the sidewalks- it would be easy and a lot quicker to give up and walk the ten short minutes back to Louis' flat.  

But he was Niall Horan, and Niall Horan was currently deadest on rinsing off all the dirt and spilt alcohol that had accumulated on his skin throughout the day in a nice, long, hot shower. Then afterwards he would sink into the nice warm mattress he had spent a month's worth of food money on (and he eats a lot for a college student so that's saying something.)

It wasn't that simple, sadly. He hears them before he sees them; loud obscenities yelled in his direction and muffled English slang that he still doesn’t really understand is being passed around the group of what looks like four drunken individuals. The shadows loom closer with each rushed step the blonde takes in the opposite direction and there is a good ten meters in between the group and himself before he starts freaking out for real- hands gripping the plastic edges of his phone that to his luck was probably out of battery. He angrily taps his fingers against the screen, and as he figured, it was.

           "Fuck fuck fuck" He starts, realizing that yeah, those guys definitely are trailing him solely.

He’s considering sprinting the rest of the way home and wonders if he should’ve asked Louis what happens if he did actually get caught in a fight. He quickens his pace until he's almost jogging.

They notice of course, laughing even more obnoxiously and coming up behind him with a staggering speed that Niall didn't know drunk men could achieve. Soon they were almost in distance of Niall being able to distinguish their words from the wind whipping against his barley-clothed back and that personally, scared him a bit.

          "Hey lad! Yeah, you. Look at us when we talk jeez you git" They slur and Niall keeps his head facing the cement the entire time, wishing entirely that tonight Louis hadn't decided to suck off his boyfriend's face among other things. At least Louis has respect, street credit, whatever the hell they called it here and for whatever reason he had earned it- Niall, he was just some teen from Ireland that decided to randomly move into this city. He thinks if he’s  going to be staying here, he should really work on getting a better reputation. Maybe if he got home safely tonight, he would think about getting a tattoo or something- he's always thought they looked sexy. 

Well, until one very tattooed knuckle started grasping at his hood. Dammit. With a sharp tug, he stumbled forcibly back a few feet into a leather jacket and bearded face.

          "Hiya , I’m liking the shoes ya got ‘ere" one who wasn’t grabbing at the fabric of his clothes said with a sneer. Hell, Niall knew where this was leading to, seeing enough to know that after this he was going to need a shower more than ever.

He thinks of just kicking off his damn shoes and seeing if they'll leave him alone. But really, it's both a pride thing and that they're his last good pair that that makes Niall decide against doing anything more than squirm around and put on his best 'I'm not fucking scared of you face" even though he really is, and they probably can sense it or whatever.

         "I said I like your shoes." he grunts out and Niall winces when he feels the first blow to his jaw, the only thing keeping him upright being the other man’s grip onto his hood from behind.

         "Show some bloody gratitude ya tosser!" Another man barks out suddenly. And Niall is trying his best to not lose it right there, start screaming his head off like he probably would've been doing by now if this was Ireland- where talking in his normal voice would be fine, his normal, very Irish sounding voice that apparently they didn't like so much here.  Not that he's gotten a ton of shit for it or anything- only a few rude slurs while serving drinks or when somebody wanted a reason to argue. Like tonight for example. So Niall uses common sense, (wow, right?) and decides it’s best to shut up for a bit, not to give these men anything else to beat him up over other than a pair of some stupid shoes he’s not willing to lose.

He doesn’t make a sound except for the involuntary inhales of breath and coughing, and it’s working so well until one of the men straight up punches him in the eye. That being when when Niall Horan trades his short-lived reign of silence for shouting hysterically at the offenders as well as fighting back harder- even though it’s four to one and they’ve had him pinned and bleeding for awhile now.   

          "Mother fucking son of a cunt! Fuck this shit, ya stupid asses, just let me fucking go you ‘alf-hung bag o’dicks I’ma sick of this!" he screams in agony, the venom in his voice sounding weird coming from his usually not spiteful mouth. But he’s angry and tired, so he screams out all that he can and collapses into himself when he can’t.  His face is pressed against the sidewalk and he can almost feel the individual rocks digging into his skin. It annoys him to no end and just adds onto how much attention he’s already paying to the sick sensation of blood seeping through eye sockets and underneath the soon to be swollen skin of his left eye.

He's shoved to the ground in an instant- and yeah, the racial harassing begins almost instantly as well. It’s a struggle for him to try and shove off the combat boots that seem want to make this moment a thousand times worse, slamming into almost every inch of his body from above like some sick hammer. He's pretty much regretting his life choices at this point as he feels the boot come hard down against his jaw again and again until he's choking on the blood, and oh god, it's so warm and sickly disgusting he wants to puke right there all over the arsehole’s stupid boots. It’s streaming down his chin and clumping in his hair and it’s definitely not only panic that’s making his vision swim so harshly. He passes out after a few more minutes, angry as fuck and breath unable to form any more curses, air unable to get past the blood coating his chapped lips.


	2. Chapter 2

            Zayn watches from afar, not in the mood to break up a fight exactly, but also not in the mood to watch anyone be beaten to death. Fights can get nasty and he's heard of it happening before, where the blood just didn't stop flowing and then come morning they’d find a bruised body laying on the sidewalk. It was sad and all, but Zayn grew up on it, so nothing new to the dark haired man. Yet, this situation was different; he recognized the voice quickly, though not pinning it to a face until he caught sight of the blonde hair mussed around a semi-familiar looking face. He's not sure the name of the teen, but he can think back to when Louis mentioned the presence of him over low lighting and whiskey- and ever since then Zayn had been catching glimpses of the blonde, either from behind the counter pouring drinks or filling the room with his easy and familiar laughter.  He wasn’t laughing tonight though.

He takes a long drag from the cigarette clasped between his fingers and really does consider cutting his smoking break short and helping the boy. He’s not sure how bad it is, but he can’t make out any words from the blond and the guys surrounding him are really starting to piss him off with their words. He knows Louis will be pretty pissed if he figures out Zayn had just watched his little Irish friend get beat up and didn't do anything, but that’s not the only reason Zayn decides to take a deep drag and make his way down from his flat’s crappy excuse for a balcony. Because despite what everyone might think, at the moment Zayn Malik is actually concerned for the well being of this blue-eyed blonde.

            He knows the men who are currently beating the shit out of Niall, he wouldn't say they were friends, but they also weren't on Zayn’s list of people that snarled insults at him whenever they walked by. Made things easier- he guesses and takes a deep drag before calling out to them.

           "Hey mates, vas happing?" a few of their heads perk up to Zayn’s voice by instinct, but he makes it clear he's not personally looking for a fight and holds his hands up with a shrug to signify that somehow.

The man gives a final strike to the teen from what Zayn can see of it, and makes hand gestures to some of the other punks that they take as a signal to strip the boy of his hoodie and shoes. Zayn thinks that it's kind of a stupid concept to take them after they beat him up, because now what he thinks was probably once nice white leather is dripping with blood; and he's never seen any so-called gangsters walk around with pink-stained shoes. That’s right, blood can stain pink. It’s a shade of red god dammit.

The man struggles a bit, but he gets the Irish kid up on his shoulders despite the trouble and swings him around so he's facing Zayn like some sort of bruised trophy.

           "Why if it ain’t the mighty Malik! Wanna kick yeah?" the one with shaved hair and a sleeveless tank top calls out to him. he can't be more than nineteen, and he's so skinny from what is probably a really bad heroin addiction that Zayn knows he could crack his skull in two with barley more than a swing of his fist; if only he was just a bit more dedicated to the cause laid out in front of him. The other three men though, he's not so sure about taking on alone.

         "Nah, just wanted to let ya know that the kid your beating up on belongs to Louis” He says and watches the color drain from the heroin kid's face with a pleased smirk. He wonders what Louis ever did to them personally and watches the other reactions satisfied until the one who was supporting Niall drops the teen suddenly. The body hits the ground with a thud and Zayn feels really sorry, because damn that’s got to hurt- but he doesn’t say anything.

            "You shitting me Malik? Louis already fucking hates me guts, I can't have him murdering me in my sleep as well!"  He grunts out angrily and Zayn knows he's right- Louis is the type to murder people in their sleep if you get him pissed off enough.

             "Shit I knew I recognized him from the pub," Another man says and looks like he's about to bolt any second. The other two men do actually flee, leaving Zayn standing there with an angry faced junkie and muscular guy supporting stretched ears and very unattractive blonde hair knotted into even more unattractive dread locks.

            "Make you a deal," Zayn states, because hell, if he didn't stretch this for it's worth he'd never forgive himself. The man looks at him with a slight interest and Zayn continues, "I want three hundred pounds by the end of tonight and I’ll make sure Louis doesn’t find out about what went on here."

They both consider it and the sleeveless junkie looks like he's going to actually agree and hand over the cash, but dreads guy stops him. "And if we don't?"

            "Well then me and Louis will have a nice conversation tomorrow about why his best mate showed up at his doorstep half-dead." he states simply and waits for a reply.

             "Ya looking for a fight Z?" The short one growls and Zayn almost face palms, because no. He is trying to make it very clear that he doesn't want a fight; just some cash for this and last month's rent so he can finally pay back his landowner, Liam- who has been quite lenient on paying actually. But they are practically brothers, considering all the shit they’ve gone through together over the years so he’s let it slide for the past few months. But that's not the point, the point is that suddenly he has a face full of angry white knuckles slammed into his left cheek and he is definitely past the stage of mild annoyance by now.

            "He asked if you wanted a fucking fight" Heroin spits out and Zayn laughs because that was the stupidest punch he's ever felt.

            "Calm down, I’m not here for that- but if ya insist..." He shrugs coolly and flicks his burnt out fag to the ground.

He can tell the moment when Dreads is getting ready to tackle him, the way his muscles twitch and his face gets all furrowed and constipated-looking. He remembers a drunken bar fight with the man a few months ago (of which Zayn had won) and thinks that  it's probably gonna be the same except for that now Zayn has two drunken idiots to deal with while he's completely sober, for once thanks.

Two seconds before Dreads swings, Zayn ducks to the side and pushes the junkie in his place. It’s easy because they're so buzzed up on alcohol that it takes them longer than it should to stop the motion- causing it to classically end with Heroin-kid face first on the ground while Dreads stands there looking like a confused puppy (minus the cute) at how Zayn and Heroin suddenly switched spots.

             The rest of their not even worth calling a fight ends pretty quickly, Zayn leaving the two tangled up in each other’s bruises while he dusts himself off with only a sprained wrist to show. He’s kind of pissed at that fact, because he knows it'll be swollen tomorrow and god dammit he needs his right hand to tattoo at the crappy parlor he works from down the street. He calms his anger  though when he digs around the jacket pocket of the man and finds almost seventy pounds nestled in his wallet along with a pack of cigarettes and a nice faux leather lighter that Zayn shoves in his own sweats and moves on to see what Heroin has hidden in his baggy trouser pockets. In the end, he has a little over a hundred pounds, which isn't as good as three hundred, but it's still nice and maybe Liam will stop giving him that disappointed look when he shows up at his flat asking for food. Because he's too broke to buy any himself (even from that shady second-hand shop down the road) and hasn't eaten in a timeframe that is longer than it should be even for him.

Zayn snaps himself out of his thoughts and suddenly remembers why he actually got involved in this the first place and kneels down by the body of the teen who he really hopes isn't dead.

            "Hey mate, can ya hear me?" He says and nudges Niall's pale cheek. He waits awhile and when he gets no response after almost a minute, he sighs and sits cross-legged on the pebbled ground next to the un-responsive blond. Pressing two fingers as gently as he can to the neck of the boy, he gains at least a little relief when he feels the beating radiate back through his fingertips. At least he won't have to deal with a dead body tonight.

            The blond is un-consciously sprawled across the cement, face illuminated in street lamps and carrying what looks like pretty bad injuries to his whole body. Zayn really does consider taking him to the hospital, but that's almost an half an hour on a motorcycle he would most definitely fall off from and plus, an ambulance would attract way to much unwanted attention to what was now the quieted down atmosphere. He sighs and decides it would be best to not stand around alone in the cold for any longer, just in case anybody else had caught on to the commotion before or those other two came back looking for Dreads and heroin kid. Chances were slim of that happing, but Zayn found it best to consider all possibilities.

He scoops the boy up, and now that nobody is around allows himself to out rightly wince at how much pain it causes his wrist to have the weight of the blond pressed against it. He's a lot lighter than Zayn expected though, all long motionless limbs and pale skin stretched around them, more squishy than muscular and that's new to Zayn who is used to men being ridiculously obsessed with becoming as physically fit as possible as if it'll make up for their gaping lack of mental compactly. Zayn carries the teen (who he doesn't even know other than from what he's heard from Louis really) up the rusted steps to his flat bridal style and ignores the blood seeping off the Irishman’s chest  and onto what was Zayn's previously favorite pair of sweats. Maybe he'll convince Louis to buy him a new pair cos at least Louis has a successful carrier made from a love of alcohol and makes good enough money from it to refund his not-as financially blessed friend's ruined wardrobe.

While he's thinking about his ruined sweats, he remembers the hoodie and how barefoot Niall is. So after he walks through the unlocked door and sets the body down on his couch- as nicely as he could while avoiding the major bleeding areas from touching the fabric.  He jogs back down the stairs and across the street to retrieve the hoodie and shoes that have been carelessly thrown in a lump off to the side. It's fairly dark still and he can't see much, but he manages to locate both shoes before heading back up to the crappy looking place he calls home and begins to try his best to not let his this innocent little blond thing die on his couch.

Still, he rings up Louis because he's trying to put off actually inspecting the damage for as long as possible.

              "Hiya, Zayn?" a voice answers sleepily on the third ring, and for a second Zayn is confused because that's definitely not Louis, before he realizes it's Harry speaking.

              "Yeah it's me, Louis there?" He says, eyes darting from where his hands are wrapped around the cell phone to where Niall's hands are clutched around his sofa’s pillow.

               "He just fell asleep, what's up, it's like two in the morning" Harry yawns slowly and waits for an answer from his dark-haired friend.

                "Well you know that little Irish lad…?" Zayn starts, trying to keep his voice from indicating that anything was wrong, something he was pretty good at doing to all other people with the exception of Harry, who had this thing for picking up on people's voice tone. It’s was probably just a hipster thing.

           "Niall? Yeah, is something up?" Harry asks, more alert than before with the newly mention of the male hanging in between them.

Zayn rubs the back of his neck, "Probably, he's passed out on my couch. Not due to alcohol I should add"

             "Aw shite, I'll wake up Louis. How bad ‘sit?" Harry speaks in that concerned voice of his and gets more worried with every second Zayn is trying to figure out how to phrase what he's looking at. Maybe he should just text a photo and let Harry judge for himself if the blood and bruising constitutes as 'bad' or not.

             "I haven’t really checked it out yet, but he's pretty much done with staining my couch red- and he doesn’t look like a woman giving birth anymore. More like a kid who fell off their bike in the need a few stitches and a shit load of ice cream."  Zayn explains, and damn he’s good at similes for someone who dropped out third year of secondary school.

He hears Harry repeating the conversation back to Louis and it isn't long before the brunette has taken the phone from Harry and is shooting questions into Zayn's ear at what would be considered inhumanly rates if it wasn’t in fact Louis and his concerned self.

            "Calm down mate, I’m sure he isn't gonna die. At least have some faith in the fact that I've been patching people up most of my life" Zayn says jokingly even though it's true and smushes the phone against his ear so he can retrieve the first aid kit he keeps in the closet.

            "Don't worry I have plenty faith in you, it’s just that I’m still coming over " Louis said in a matter of fact voice.

Zayn sighs, "It'll be fine if you wait till morning, it doesn't look like he'll wake up till then anyways" He says and understands how much Louis cherishes the few nights in a month that he can solely spend with Harry in his uptown flat.

             "Are you sure? I feel like an arse for not being there"

Zayn reassures him that it's perfectly fine for what has to be the fifth time and he eventually gets Louis off the phone and back into the arms of his curly haired boyfriend, promising to be there at no later than eight the next morning.

He sets the phone down on his counter and decides to make sure that what he was saying about Niall being perfectly fine was true and he wouldn't need to find a ride to the hospital.

             "Heads up I'm getting you naked, don't accuse me for assault when ya wake please" Zayn mutters and props Niall up so he can more easily slip off the blood stained t-shirt and awkwardly try to pry off the tight skinny jeans clamped around his legs. Once off, he throws the clothes into the wash and walks back over to the couch to assess if all that blood was actually hinting that the injuries could be bad.

Zayn's eyes scan up and down the pale skin in a way he tries to not make look too sexual and it's really not _that_ bad. Except for how it totally is.

There's far more internal bleeding that outer (besides that chest); and for that Zayn considers Niall pretty lucky that they punched him and smashed his legs to the ground rather than stabbing him.  Zayn had experience in both receiving and dealing with stab wounds, and after the first two he'd  reluctantly patched up on what was either himself or Liam (he can’t remember)  he'd came to the conclusion that even broken bones were far better than having a rusty knife shoved through your abdomen.

             He grabs disinfectant pads and settles himself down on the sagged arm of the couch so he has the best reach available without having to slot himself directly above Niall’s hips in order to swab at his chest.

              It's peacefully quiet in the room, something Zayn has never really taken for granted so he just whistles to himself quietly and skims his hands over nicely built but far too bruised shoulders. He wonders what would've happened if he had never took up late-night smoking as a hobby. Looking at the way Niall's mouth was settled slightly ajar and struggling for breaths made Zayn realize that he really didn't want to imagine what the assholes on the street could’ve done farther to the innocent teen sprawled on his couch struggling for each breath as it is.

             He's  fairly satisfied with the bandages and makeshift splint he needed to secure Niall’s probably fractured ankle (he’ll make sure the kid gets that looked at by a doctor tomorrow) and he’s almost sure that Niall doesn't look like he's been mauled by a tiger anymore. So that’s a plus.

After that he proceeds to dig out the smallest pair of sweats he can find from the not-so depth of his closet and a tee shirt that he’s almost sure isn’t even his to go along with them. He tries not to bump the splinted ankle while he wrestles to get the sweats on, and after shimming the t-shirt over messy blonde hair, he adds offering the teen a shower to the list of things he needs to do. Especially since he's finally gotten the hot water working and no matter how hard he tried he had given up on getting the blood out of Niall's hair with solely a wash cloth and his fingers.

The sweat pants are too long for Niall's shorter frame, and he almost considers taking the time to roll them up at the ends before dismissing it because the shirt works well enough and Zayn spends his thoughts on things like the fact of how weird it is dressing an unconscious person. Almost like how his little sister would dress her dolls before they had gotten stolen right out of her hands. And that leads Zayn to twiddle on a whole new idea, like how if Niall's face weren't covered in bruises and scrapes he could probably pass for a porcelain doll, all that pale skin and bright blue eyes.

Zayn holds onto Niall's waist and carries him as he did before, arms wrapped limply around his shoulders and leg carefully supported by the hand Zayn could actually use. Though this time the destination being a few yards away from into his bedroom- as to up a bunch of metal stairs in the dark. He's slept on that couch enough to know that waking up with indentations of metal springs and an all over ache plastered to your back isn’t fun at all. So he holds the Irishman and makes way to the slightly-less shitty mattress. Hoping that he doesn't decide to wake up and steal something, not that Zayn has anything worth stealing- the only cash on him being that of which he took out of the thug's pockets. Just to be sure though- because Zayn is never sure, after he dumps Niall on the bed Zayn goes to pull out the gun he keeps hidden under his bedspring. It's not really hidden though- because everyone hides their gun within ten feet of their bed if not always attached to some part of their body. He shoves it in his sweats and the sudden coldness from the metal gives him goose bumps. He's never bothered with a holster because he's just about never taken it outside. He had a belief there was enough guns on these streets as it was and he didn't need to add to the growing population if he could just defend himself with fists and a brain instead. He just liked having it around his home, making up for the fact that he didn't have roommates who would wake him up if anything was happing. 

After grabbing a blanket for himself and shutting off the lights he walks back to the couch and considers the idea of taking another smoke break. His is last one was rudely interrupted by a few bastards picking on some teen who was now laying injured in his bed, wearing his sweatpants and Zayn still doesn't know anything about his besides what Louis has told him and what he's caught from across the pub in lowlights and loud atmospheres. Probably not the ideal way to start a friendship, if even. 

He flops down on the springy couch that he totally planned on sleeping on tonight anyways. Because fuck you, Zayn Malik enjoys spending eight hours tattooing a stupid cross on some guy's hairy arm in the same hunched over position, only then to throw out his back even farther by getting in a not-even fight with some heroin junkie and his muscle head. It’s just topping off his night to sleep on his crappy couch just because that cute blond haired teen might appreciate the fact that at least he doesn't wake up with the back of a ninety year old. Zayn stares up at the cracked ceiling and listens to the obnoxiously loud hum of his heater until he drifts off thinking about how he's going to work around a sprained wrist tomorrow when it's _obvious_ that his left handed tattoos look like they were done by a four year old. Not that he's ever drunkenly tattooed an idiot with his left hand because that same idiot lost a bet. Nope. His boss was going to throw a fit tomorrow when he called in that’s for sure. Hopefully he won’t lose his job and end up living in Liam’s basement with that creepy hobo again.

-


	3. Chapter 3

           Zayn ends up waking up four hours later at almost exactly six in the morning. One of the responsibilities of getting a steady job being that you actually have to show up on time or else they may or may not (but probably will) fire you. But Zayn's not working today, more or less because he currently can't feel- much less function any part of his right hand. Also he has a worried Tommo to deal with in two hours. Another life lesson Zayn’s learned through the years they've known each other is that worried Louises are probably even worse than a bitchy Louis because gosh when feelings get involved everything usually decides to go to shit with him.

He stands up in the darkened apartment type thing he calls his home and regretfully leaves the shitty couch since there is no way he's falling back asleep on that thing, no matter    how exhausted he currently is. 

He sits around at his kitchen counter for a while, inhaling the bitter scent of freshly  brewed coffee until it was cool enough to put to his lips and just generally trying to get over his lack of any decent sleep in what seemed like months. He grabs a magazine from the mess of bills and paperwork spread aimlessly across his wannabe-stone counter top and spends the next half an hour reading about how Rihaana and Chris Brown were suddenly back together. 

A while later he's horribly bored of doing nothing and doubts his house guest will wake anytime soon, so he creeps into his bedroom and shuffles around the dark until he finds some decent jeans and a worn out red hoodie. He made sure to check that Niall was still breathing on his way out, being the compassionate and caring nurse he surely was. 

He scribbles a note for Louis in case he’s not back by eight and doesn’t bother putting out a key because somehow Louis waltzes into his house whenever he want anyways, usually at highly inappropriate times to be honest.  Zayn doesn’t even remember ever giving him a key.

He grabs the cash from last night and hopes that Liam will let him off the hook for another month because he really needs to go buy something editable before he kneels over from the lack of calories and increase of caffeine pulsing through his system.

It’s a nice day out for once, autumn wind whistling around the crowded streets and he’s almost sure that he can hear the birds chirping from where they’re perched on various lamp posts. Zayn likes days like these most, where the rain is gone and the usual bitterness that people harbor onto and carry around with them seems to lesson along as well.

               “Look who finally decided to pay a visit!” A voice calls out after he pushes open the first grocery store’s doors that caught his eye and walks into the roomy little shop. He looks over across the shortened aisles of fruit and canned goods and tapes the voice talking to him onto a face of wild red hair and bright smiles.

              “Ed, man I haven’t seen ya in forever! You work at a food market now?”  Zayn grabs a basket as talks and gives Ed a half-hearted hug with his free arm.

              “Yup, I manage a bunch of clumsy employees nowadays- and believe me when I say they need a ton of managing. It’s sure hard work” He sighs and dramatically chugs down half of his soda.

              “That’s great mate, but yanno I’m still a bit hurt and confused as to why you never replied to my calls. I missed my ginger! Had me worried you ran off with that dumbarse blonde to sing about heartbreak and skip off into the sunset or something” He shudders at the thought and checks behind the vegetable stand just to be sure the six foot lipstick lover wasn’t lurking in with the carrots or anything.

              “I truly apologize for making you come to that conclusion Zayn. Truth though, I lost my phone awhile ago- just haven’t had the time or money to buy a new one I guess.” Zayn tosses some more vitamin C into his plastic basket along with bread and a few packages of tea for good measure.

Zayn shops around for a while because he has nothing else to do today and Ed is great company, a perfect blend of intelligent and witty which is something that Zayn desperately needs to be entertained with as of late. A little more than half of his money ends up spent on food (and hair gel) even though Ed, being the good sales person he was gave him a shit-load of coupons and manager discounts because he was nice like that.

          “So how’d you manage to get off work in the middle of the week?” Ed asks with a mild interest that he usually carries.

Zayn tugs up his sleeve and points out the tightly wrapped bandages across his wrist. “Just some bastards last night that shoved me ‘round enough for it to be serious”

          “Ouch, better have been for something good this time. Getting your knuckles split over a brand of beer again wouldn’t be very significant.”

           “Oi, didn’t even start that one,” Zayn shrugs “Anyways it’s just a sprain, I’ll be back to stabbing stupid designs in sweaty people’s arms within a few days.”

           “Sounds like loads of fun and creative expression” Ed shrugs and offers to help Zayn carry the groceries back to his flat.

-

               When Niall's body finally decided it was time to get the fuck up it was still far too soon in his option.

He kept his eyes screwed shut for the longest  time he could manage and tried to remember why he felt like he had just survived freefalling from a burning plane and into a field of cactus or at least something along those lines to justify the pain he’s feeling. It takes almost ten minutes before he convinces himself that it’s time to open his eyes and see how bad it really was, because his imagination was killing him.

 

               He finally does open his eyes, or eye and a half because he can barely see past the puss and dark circles encasing his left face. It's dark in the unfamiliar room, but he can see either a sunset or sun rise through the slotted blinds. He kicks the covers off, and dammit, that was a bad idea he finds out soon enough as he feels a shooting pain throughout what was probably his whole entire lower half breaking in a million pieces. He has a splint on his leg and bandages scattered along his arms where the rocks broke skin, it’s not very pretty but Niall bruises easily so maybe it wasn’t actually _that_ bad.

            "I can’t feel my ass" he mutters to himself because he also can't seem to raise his voice above anything more than a raspy whisper; which is so unlike his regularly loud and obnoxious tone that he would be laughing at himself if not for the fact that he was kinda physically unable to.

It's only after a mental whining session about how his body hates him that lasts for about five minutes before he sucks it up and focuses his attention on more important things like wondering where the hell he was. So It's definitely not his flat, and unless there is a secret guest bedroom Louis has been harboring away in his own tiny house-thing on the second floor of the pub- then it isn't his either. 

There's a few posters on the wall, a desk tucked away in the corner and a closet plastered to the wall directly in front of the bed- it’s all he can make out, but it lets him at least cross out the possibility of Harry's apartment because Harry can afford way better furnishings than rusty bed posts and burn-scarred dressers. Not that he's complaining- the bed is comfy and if his mind wasn't focused on how his body feels like it's about to die- he would maybe appreciate the atmosphere more. But his leg is twitching and his back itches from where it’s pressed against the mattress not to mention how he needs so many pain meds in his system right now. Niall takes a deep breath and gives himself a start by rolling to his side to get a better angle. That doesn't go over well. If regular Niall is uncoordinated, bruised and slightly disoriented Niall is a walking disaster. Next thing he knows his face is pressed against the floor in agony, and what a great way to finally find your voice- screaming out curses at the top of your lungs. 

His fingers instinctively clutch around the sides of his head and he stays like that- grabbing his hair and shouting about genitalia and somebody's mother while trying not to pay attention to how there is a puddle of blood seeping through whoever's tee shirt he's wearing and out of his chest. 

Niall is sure he is about to black out again, but then suddenly there are warm hands  on him and he stops with the cursing long enough to realize that there is someone else in the room.  He let’s go of his temples and lets himself be lifted back up on the bed in a swift motion that Niall hadn't realized had even happened until he felt himself sitting upright again, back supported against that rusted headboard and breath still working on catching up. 

 

              "Way to scare the shit out of somebody, I congratulate you thoroughly" The man in front of him says and weaves his fingers through his dark hair in what could be disappointment if not for the slight smile playing across his lips. 

Niall is too busy cradling his leg to his chest in an attempt to calm himself down to really notice the man, but he's almost positive that he recognizes those dark eyes and that dark hair. "Sorry mate" Niall half smiles even though he’s in ahella lot of pain.

Zayn holds his arms up in a 'No need to apologies' gesture or at least that's what Niall is taking it as.

              "I'm Zayn, by the way. I don't think you're going to die, but you'll probably want to see a doctor about that ankle cos it’s looking quite fractured."  He finishes. 

              "This ya house?  T’anks a shitload for not leaving me passed out on the street, I’m Niall” He replies and considers shaking hands or something because Zayn is just standing there with a dumb look. 

              "It’s cool, I'm sure Louis would've shot me if I hadn't" Zayn shrugs and Niall is slightly disappointed that the only reason he was alive is because of Louis being scary. "He came by this morning in case you were wondering- decided that I should let you sleep because sleep heals injuries or some bullshit.” Zayn’s looking at Niall with that puzzled stare again before he lets out a sigh.

             “Even though you're bleeding all over my bed again and I guess that means that I'm not as good with stitches as I thought." 

             "Shit, I have stitches?"Niall asks pulling up his shirt, his whole chest is numb so it’s not like he would’ve noticed before trying to propel himself forward with his chest. And yup, those are definitely stitches sewn in small ‘x’ shapes across his upper right chest. "Shit I do" Niall groans because he was a disaster the minute he woke up.

             “Sorry stitches are bitches but I think someone pulled a knife. They didn’t get very far with it though, so you’re bloody lucky”

             “Or just bloody,” Niall smiles at his own joke and Zayn sits himself down next to Niall to examine how many were ripped out by Niall flaying his arms around when he fell.

             "If you want I can fix it now, or better yet- I’ll just take it upon myself to fix them now because I’m pretty sure you'll black out again if we don't close that." Zayn says and is already waving Niall off to go find the first aid kit he never put away from last night.

 

He's back in a few minutes, ripping the plastic top off of a new needle because he's smart enough to use sanitized and clean things unlike certain neighbors of his. "Here take off your shirt, this'll probably sting, so sorry in advance” He tells the blond and watches as he shrugs off the shirt muttering about a deeply rooted fear of needles or something.

            Zayn tries to work fast, but he'd rather take his time and make them thoroughly embedded than rush and risk them ripping out again. Niall bits his lip and tries fairly hard to stop himself from outwardly screaming, but the feeling of needles sliding underneath his skin freaks him out enough that he chews at his lip until he can taste blood staining the inside of his mouth. And great, now he can add mouth injuries to the list of shit that's thoroughly fucked up with his body.

After the third and final piece of broken thread is out his skin is all angry red and irritated but he at least gets Zayn to count to three before he shoves the needle in. He’s thinking about how kind of a gesture that is until Zayn goes ahead and decides to be an arse by shoving the needle through at only two and a half. Niall flinches but the hand Zayn's not using to sew up his chest is doing a great job keeping him still, that warm tan skin attached firmly to his shoulder and pressing it gently against the headboard. If he weren’t withering in pain he would probably laugh at how this could be the beginning of a really corny but equally hot porno.

           "There you have it" Zayn speaks after almost ten minutes of Niall withering beneath him. The blond touches his chest lightly where Zayn's had previously been pressing against and tries to force a grateful smile out of clenched teeth.

            "Thanks, but can I go die now?" He states dramatically and then falls back down against the mattress, facing Zayn but closing his eyes because even after all that sleep he was still dead tired. "Actually 'm starving, I think Ima gonna eat then die." His stomach growls to that as if to prove a point.

            "I guess you're lucky I spent all my rent money on food this morning" Zayn says and doesn't complain about how another person is eating his hard earned groceries- well at least he doesn’t complain that Niall is eating it because he’s the reason  that Zayn didn’t go hungry today.

Niall grins for real this time, pain not forgotten but at least receded at the mention of stuffing his face full since he hasn’t eaten in about a day, a new record almost.

 

                   After what Zayn constitutes as lot of awkward grabbing and a full-on vocabulary lesson in Gaelic swears, they make way to the kitchen. Zayn gave up on letting Niall walk on his own after the second time he almost fell flat on his face. Having to heave the teen up in his arms once again; although this time Niall was awake. and like he's mentioned, quite vocal. Something Zayn doesn't appreciate when Niall's face is smooshed up rather close to his ear and no matter how he tries to get the blond to calm the fuck down, it just didn't work. And Zayn is usually the one who's good at getting people to calm to the fuck down.

He sets Niall down at the counter and digs around the cabinets for pain meds, popping open a bottle of Tylenols and pouring a glass of water for the person who was currently groaning into his kitchen counter in the most animalistic way he could possibly manage.

                 "Here take some drugs, they'll make you feel better yeah" Zayn says with his most convincing voice and holds a pile of the small white ovals in one hand, water in the other. Niall holds his hand out in a relived gesture but then snaps it back after a short moment of contemplation.

                "Wait, you're not giving me date rape drugs so you can do things to my injured body while I’m passed out alone with you in yer flat right?" He says cautiously and stares at Zayn with these intense blue eyes and it makes him automatically blame his kitchen lighting, because no one’s eyes are actually that perfect.

Niall blinks, waiting for an answer he supposes and Zayn is broken out of his staring session. He looks away and chuckles lightly, "Mate, you've been passed out all day. If I wanted to do something, it would've happened already."

               "Mm...That’s a good point," Niall says and swallows down the Tylenol, taking the pills from Zayn with an easy trust that honestly startles him a bit. He wonders if Niall knows he has a gun stuffed in his hoodie, wonders what he would do if he told him, showed him. Zayn's not like that, but he's curious to see just how far this boy's trust will stretch with a man that mis well be a stranger.

 

Zayn makes sandwiches with the ham he bought from the deli section and even grabs some sodas and crisps. Even though it was eleven at night and it seems like some foreign concept to his body to eat food after dinner, he really was still hungry and Niall has been making it clear just how ready he is to turn to cannibalism. He loses count of how many Niall has engulfed once it reaches five; and damn he thought he would have enough food for a week. But apparently not since Niall is a vacuum in training and Zayn’s body has declared that it don’t give no fucks that the food it’s ingesting is probably not gonna be happy once it reaches his bone dry digestive system.

It’s not that Zayn has a ‘I can count every one of your ribs when you lift up your shirt’ type of bodies. He still has muscle from when he was an early teen and could find time to obsess over working out and bug his mom for protein bars. But nowadays his mom lives hundreds of miles away and twenty-one year old Zayn doesn’t have the money for anything other than toast in the morning, ramen at work and whatever he can snag from Louis if he stops at his pub on his way home.

                Niall thanks him and burps, it should be disgusting but the teen has some sort of talent that translates everything he does into either disturbingly cute or unintentionally sexy. After all the bread and meat is gone, they just sit around at Zayn’s counter drinking sodas and talking.

Surprisingly, Zayn learns a lot about the teen.  Some things he's already known- but he kinda likes hearing that Irish tinted voice so he doesn't stop him. Like how Niall is studying at the community college for some degree in business even though he's still unsure about what the hell he wants to do with his life- how Louis offered him a well paid job, how he had loved Ireland tons, but was just a little sick of bad meat and potatoes every day. Some things Zayn didn't know before now, and he’ll happily listen about all the little things that sculpt Niall into this funny eccentric nineteen year old he was. Zayn doesn't talk much about his own life, just that he tattoos down town and hopes that maybe someday he'll make enough to open up his own shop in an area that appreciates art as more than gang signs and curly letters with stupid messages strewn across fat men's chests.

             "Yanno, you should give me one- I don’t really plan on being a gangster so you can go all out on the artsy-ness of it" Niall smiles. Honestly, Zayn dwells on the idea of drawing lines over all that flawlessly pale and smooth skin for longer than he should be.

             "Yeah I could make that happen" He says thoughtfully and secretly hopes that Niall is being serious.

              "Nialler! Look at you, all bruised up. Poor mate, mind if I take a picture?" Louis shouts, bursting into Zayn’s kitchen and not wasting any time in tackling Niall into a lopsided hug. He pulls his phone out from his jacket pocket and ignores Niall’s shouts of protest as an image of his face and black eye appear on Louis' phone screen.

 

             "Nice to see you too yeh cunt," Niall says in a mixture of surprised and angry as he tries to wrestles the phone away from Louis.

             "No! Niall stop, we need this image as memorabilia to your first street fight- hey Zaynie!"   Zayn waves at Louis from where he’s currently seated up against the counter “Yo,”

            "God you're an ass" Niall huffs, too tired of arm wrestling against an eccentric Louis and too disabled to stand up and get the phone himself. Louis swings his arms around Niall for a last time in apology before greeting Zayn the same way, snagging a drink from his soda and throwing his arm over the dark haired man’s shoulder. "Thanks for patching him up, I don’t know what would've happened to this beautifully innocent lad if ya weren't there"

Louis insists on staying for hours, and no surprise- the bar owner brought alcohol with him! Seeming to pull it out of nowhere and offer it to the other two men knowing that neither could really resist the fancy brand of wine. "For celebrating Nialler's growth into a man" he had simply stated and poured the red liquid into regular cups because Zayn didn't have any made specifically for nice alcohol like Louis'.

They stay happily buzzed for awhile, the three young men sprawled across Zayn's couch and living room floor talking nonsense and making each other laugh with stupid jokes that Niall makes up to mostly entertain himself. Louis starts a story about how some wannabe gangster (who was no more than twelve) came into the pub today and demanded the best vodka. It's a good time and Zayn likes the way Niall's drunken slur mixes in with his accent and flushed cheeks.

 


	4. Chapter 4

Zayn loses his job a week later.

Surprisingly enough, It has nothing to do with the fact that he had to cancel three days worth of appointments due to his sprained wrist. He sees the whole situation as comical; even though it should be considered by anyone else as anything but. After all, he didn't exactly waste, but more-so lent, his entire teenage existence to that very shop. Spending every penny to his name on the most shitless ink he could buy, and a machine that he wouldn't have to replace for a long time hadn't been an easy task.

He still holds fond memories of his dad ridiculing him and the fact that his mom had made it common knowledge that she had wanted Zayn to be the one who graduated collage, moved to the country and married a lass with two kids and a dog. She, like any self-respecting mother, wanted Zayn to have all that she didn’t. But sadly, at fifteen he was too young to understand that, and completely fine living his life as long as there were sketchbooks and cigarettes readily available.

The apprenticeship was long hours of no pay and consisted of more cleaning the shop than actually drawing on skin, but damn was he happy when he finally was able to tattoo an actual person. His boss was a pain in the ass from the start. He just never would've thought that that same pain would be such a full on punch to the gut until a few hours ago when the asshole  had told him to pack up the little corner of the shop that by now he had formed a full on emotional connection with.

He didn’t argue- surprisingly and a first for Zayn. He boxed his machines solemnly and hugged his confused co-workers a last goodbye, walking out the door with his pride intact and anger boiling just slightly underneath his otherwise totally cool exterior.

It's still mystery as to why he actually got fired, but he pours himself a cup of tea and figures it has to do with how he'd refused to tattoo at least twenty men within the past few months. Not without good reason-, they all were either piss drunk or sure to cause trouble within the shop- or at least with Zayn. His manager had been far past the state of pissed off and told him for the thousandth time that as long as they're willing to pay it shouldn't matter if they are drooling in the chair with beer clouded vision and a three inch blade in their back pocket or not. To say they didn't see eye to eye most of the time was right to a degree.

Back at his flat, the tanned man files his anger into tiny daggers, shooting the worries of being broke as fuck into the wall across from him with a blank glare strewn across heavy eyebrows and lips pursed into a thin line. He is way to sober to be thinking about how his already shitty life has just gotten so much worse.

He ignores the sad pile of what was his tattooing career, now bunched lazily along the baseboard of his wall, ignores the empty wallet void of everything but an id and few singles. Counting them up, he grabs his jacket with a huff and storms out of the flat.

Liam’s door rattles against its frame harshly when Zayn knocks against it, it's making his wrist throb in dull reminder that it still hurts like hell and he didn’t even realized that the door has been opened until his fist meets Liam's face.

"Oww, what was that for?" Liam grumbles and rubs his fore palm against the reddening skin across his cheek, looking upwards at Zayn with betrayed eyes.

"Fuck, sorry Li."

"Rough day?"

Zayn falls into the other man's arms like second nature. " I need so much alcohol in my body right now"

"Lemme just save my computer work" Liam says and strokes his fingers through Zayn's messy quiff.

Zayn bitches at Liam for the whole ten minutes it takes him to save everything he was working on, and Liam being the loving mate he is just hums quietly and nods his head, eventually telling Zayn that it'll be more worthwhile to bitch at life with the help of a nice atmosphere and a nice blonde bartender. Zayn pretends to ignore the last comment, sighing out a "Well let's get going yeah" and lets himself be guided out the door with Liam's arms across his leather jacket.

They take Zayn's bike due to the rain; even though Zayn knows he'll most likely be walking home or crashing on Louis' comfy couch that he was absolutely not jealous of. Well maybe a little. Mostly Just because he felt bad for the other people who put up with his couch and then needed to go buy a back massage from some shady prostitute down the street the next day- Not that he's ever bought a shady back massage or anything.

They pull up to the all to familiar pub and Liam groans from where he's clutched onto the back of Zayn's seat. "You could try going the speed limit sometime, it won't kill you and it definitely will reduce the risk of me dying from falling off your stupid bike, which is currently very high" He steps off woozily,  Zayn pockets his keys and jumps down to help him not fall and break his face.

"Sorry mate, but you deserve it for dissing my love" He replies and looks longingly at the only street compatible vehicle he's had since his fourteen year old self’s bicycle.

"Whatever," Liam shakes the slight fridge out of his eyes.

The all too familiar smell of booze hits Zayn in the face, complemented with an equally familiar chime when he cranks open the pub’s rustic wooden doors. it's corny as hell, but his mood brightens just a little when he sees the blue-eyed vanilla skinned Niall waving at him from the counter. "Aye, Zayn! Long time no see, getcher ass over here I have shit for you"

"it's only been a week," Zayn smiles just a little and takes a seat next to Liam. "And I hope the shit you're talking about is beer, because I definitely need that right now"

"Well ya can't drink it, but Louis wanted me to buy you a pair" Niall grins easy and fumbles with his crutches all the way to the back room. When he comes back, Zayn finds a pair of sweats chucked at his face in the nicest way possible.

"'M sorry that your other pair is stained red cos I was an idiot who tried walking home alone" he says simply and Zayn smiles a little wider, vocally agreeing that it was a shit move on Niall’s part.

“Yeah but I met ‘cha” The blond simply states and moves out of Zayn’s personal space to pour Liam and him some cocktails.

He gets really intoxicated after that, spills a bunch of shit on his shirt while complaining about life. Liam was right though- Zayn is feeling much better with blue eyed blond pouring his drinks and actually acknowledging his personal angst.

His fingers are gripped loosely around the  glass and he can feel buzz making its way through his veins. "Mean, I worked m'ass off at 'hat place, got paid 'solute shit but, w's te art"

"I feel ya man, i 'member when i star'd working 't te coffee 'ouse. made ten 'nhour nd bos us treat'd ma like sh't. i stayed for te caffine. ‘nd Louie ordering a ‘ouble mocha every wens’dy." Harry ‘s smile is all drunken kittens and rainbows as he chugs down his glass.  The curly haired man being seated with one arm swung around Zayn’s shoulder and the other rubbing circles against Louis' thigh underneath the counter.

Zayn groans and his drunken mind spends maybe too much time on wishing he had someone to rub circles on his skin and kiss sloppily in low lighting of the pub. Zayn lets his head fall against the counter and feels Harry’s arm leave his shoulder so it can better cup Louis' ass or whatever.

"S'what ya gonna do about losing yer job?" Niall asks, and Zayn vaguely wonders when he got back.

"Drink, smoke, drink s'more" he says, face still plastered to the cool stone although he kinda wants to make himself look up because he's sure Niall is doing that dumb smile where his whole face lights up at the slightest mention of humor. Zayn wasn't trying to be funny because as his record shows he probably will drink a lot and smoke three packs a day until he finds something worth waking up for, but till then he'll take Niall's smile as a favor.

"Lou would probably let'cha work here, ya could take some of me hours and I could maybe study more and not fail collage " Niall suggests. Louis makes a noise that sounds more positive and directed towards him rather than the pornographic moans he's been shoving down Harry’s throat since the curly haired man offhandedly mentioned the story of their love blossoming from coffee shop encounters.

He ponders the idea of working at the pub, it would be easy money and he'd get to spend time with his mates- but like a crappy community college commercial he decides what he really needed was a career, not a minimum wage job serving alcohol.

"it would help with the part of ya drinking yourself in a coma too"

"Can't smok'in 'ere thoou" Zayn slurs and lifts his head up from the counter, eyes meeting Niall's back as the man turns to get Zayn another round.

Liam gets back from the bathroom then, shoving the tangled mess of limbs that is Louis and Harry off what was his seat before the boyfriends got to it.

He’s pretty sure he passes out an hour later to Niall’s laughter and misses that rare state Liam got into when he actually decided to be irresponsible and live a little on the alcoholic’s side.

-

"Wake up sleepy 'ead"

Zayn shoves his head farther into the arm of the couch and mumbles out something close to "'op poking ma cheek" but it's useless because there is still someone poking his cheek and it's getting very annoying to the very hung-over and very sleep deprived Zayn.

"Harry made breakfast," Liam says, but it can’t just be Liam alone because he’s the one person that knows better than anyone to not fucking poke Zayn’s face non-stop in the morning much less  after a night of drinking.

"Yeah, his pancakes are fecking 'mazing! Gotta try 'em" A closer voice chimes in and the poking magically stops. His opens his eyes dreadfully and realizes the only reason Niall stopped poking his face is because he needs his hands to make gesture with while he talks.

Zayn mumbles a bunch of non-sense and squints at the open blinds. "Can ya just like... slide them into ma mouth?"

Niall is laughing so hard at the completely honest face Zayn holds that when the blond goes to lift himself off from where he's perched on the side on the couch he stumbles with his crutches and falls onto his ass.

"Niall! Are you okay?" concerned Liam questions and rushes to help the man off Louis’ floor. Zayn cocks his head over the side of the couch to find Niall not laughing anymore, a pouty expression covering his face as he rubs his ass and accepts Liam’s hand. Zayn most defiantly does not let out a girlish giggle at the sight.

"'M fine. That's the second time I fell on my arse today, haha. damnit" Liam helps him to his feet and leans him against the couch like he can’t just one footed hobble himself to the cushions himself.

Zayn makes it a point to pat the Irish boy’s shoulder as he finally wills himself sit up. "Maybe we should just get you a wheelchair. With safety straps"

“And a safety harness” Louis pipes in from the kitchen.

“While you’re at it, get a leash and collar” Harry adds.

“Now that’s just getting kinky” Zayn comments and Niall sticks his tongue out in a huff.

To say Harry's cooking is good is an understatement- it's not only good, it's a complete and utter foodgasm in Zayn's mouth. He'll never be able to contemplate how a simple pancakes and bacon could be better than any meal he's had at a restaurant, but it is and he clears almost two plates before he’s sure his stomach is going to explode. It’s the perfect hangover food, and after that and a few Advil he’s back to feeling normal.

"Louis, I might have to steal your man" Zayn smiles satisfied, pulling Harry into a sideways shoulder hug of appreciation and love of food.

"Didn't know you rolled that way Zaynie" Louis jokes in a false gasp and pulls his man back from Zayn's arms because no one gets to be gay with the curly haired hipster but him.

"Shouldn’t matter as long as they can cook" he says jokingly even though he's never really stopped to consider if it mattered or not.

“I’d just want the sex, I can buy takeout if they’re shit at cooking” Niall says in a dreamily way that Zayn isn’t sure is directed at the mention of sex or takeout food.

Liam gives Zayn a look he can’t decipher so he shoves past the brunette on his way to put the syrup in the fridge and shots him an equally undecipherable look back.

“Luckily I have both” Louis brags and Harry kisses him on the cheek. The two of them really have no boundaries when it comes to PDA. It’s either extremely cute and sweet moments like these, or close to pornographic scenes of groping and sucking off each other’s faces that they’ve been creating since the two became a couple. Zayn actually wouldn’t be surprised if the two had filmed a fully fledged porno in this flat.

Niall leaves Louis’ first, his classes starting in an hour and he hasn't even been home since yesterday. He takes up Harry's offer to drive him back to his flat, not having a car and sure as hell not going to try and wobble down the busy sidewalks, learning that lesson after an unfortunate accident only a few days after he came back from the hospital and was walking to pick up groceries (in full daylight too.) Maybe in the near future he'll have gotten enough saved to buy a moped or maybe even a badass motorcycle like the one Zayn owns. His usually free-flowing mind gets hung up on Zayn’s motorcycle and that somehow morphs into Niall spending the car ride daydreaming about those hazel eyes and perfectly sculpted cheekbones, only half listing to what Harry’s talking about. The car comes to a halt in front of the complex "See ya mate, thanks for the ride!" Niall smiles and starts his way to his (thankfully) ground level flat.

“No problem” Harry flashes him a smile and maneuvers himself out of the parking lot.

Niall throws off his hoodie, smelling of alcohol and smoke from when he followed Zayn outside this morning after breakfast to watch him smoke; even though he knows he can’t stand the smell and Zayn practically made it a point to breathe his tobacco stained breath all over Niall’s already beer spilled hoodie. At least it was hot, and sincerely that was all that Niall decided to care about.

He somehow manages to get dressed, feed his cat and cram a good fifteen minutes of studying in before his friend Josh comes and picks him up. He feels sort of bad about making his mates drive around town just to cater to the fact that he doesn’t have a car and can’t walk anymore, but at least Josh lives in the same complex and has the same morning class as him so he figures it isn’t a huge inconvenience.

“You saw Malik again?” Josh asks- his words laced with more disappointment than actual curiosity so when he asked it sounded less like a question and more like a fact.

Niall tries to wipe the giveaway smile off his face. “Maybe”

The brunette looks like he’s about to dive into the all too familiar tellings of why exactly he has a fully fledged grudge against the tall dark, mocha cappuccino man; his lips tugged downwards and eyes ready to set off on a rampage- but Niall cuts him off before given the chance to rant.

“I know yeh don’t like him, but I think he’s a great person that deserves a second opinion. Especially from you- who’s only met him once.”  Niall says, hoping that he hasn’t just started a war between his two mates.

“Niall, he stabbed my brother”

‘But he didn’t kill him’ Niall wants to add but it feels a little wrong to bring up considering Josh’s brother died less than a year ago (not at all due to Zayn might he add.) “Can we just drop this? I won’t talk bout him around you and you shouldn’t worry yeah?” Niall tries to say lightheartedly.

“I don’t man, I just really feel like you’re setting yourself up for rejection with this” Niall frowns.

“But I don’t even-“

“Shh. We’re not talking about him.” Josh says sassily and pulls Niall along to their afternoon lecture.

They may not be talking about him, but the blue eyed Irishman sure is going to be thinking about him for the whole hour.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops I did it again.  
> Also this is getting really long, I apologize to people who dislike reading these long-ass fics.
> 
> check out my tumblr, its full of gay.
> 
>  
> 
> [tea-and-feels](http://www.tea-and-feels.tumblr.com/)

Sad enough, Niall doesn't run into Zayn for the next few weeks, or even hear anything pertaining to his presence. As far as the Irishman knows, Zayn hadn't even stepped in the pub since the evening he came sulking through the doors with a frown painting his pretty face.

Thank god he got Zayn to at least crack a smile that night, Niall doesn't think he would have ever forgiven himself if he had left Zayn in that sorry state of drinking and moping. And boy did it pay off by the end of the night, because now the last images he has pictured of Zayn is of him smiling just slightly more than usual and thanking Niall for buying the drinks and entertaining his sulking self.

So maybe the reason Niall takes up a few more hours bar tending is sorta directed at wanting to see Zayn’s perfect face again- so what, he can have crushes right?

At first, after not seeing him for awhile, he thinks the man is just getting his drinks earlier, before Niall’s shifts actually start. Or maybe he only likes to drink on Wednesdays and Sundays, the two nights a week Niall gets to Skype with his mates back in Ireland or hold marathon gaming sessions with Josh and his lovely x-box.

After the first week of Zaynless-ness, he breaks from the curiosity-casually asking Louis what his choco latte friend is up to. Louis just nods thoughtfully, explaining to Niall how it’s within the Zayn’s natural behavioral patterns to disappear for long amounts of time and then reappear with a new design etched into his forearm, or more likely, a new girl attached to his hip. Niall gives a muffled reply while he is silently disapproving at Zayn’s choice of hip decorations.

“Here” Louis pulls his phone out from tight trouser pocket and tosses it to the general direction of the blond. “If you’re missing him, tell ‘m to get his introverted arse over here and have a pint.”

Niall flashes him a thanks and scrolls through Louis’ contacts, pressing the call button once he comes across the one rightfully labeled ‘Zayniebear’.

The ringing continues for a while, screen pressed flush against Niall’s ear as he shoves his shoulder onto the other side of the phone and pours a brunette girl another round. He redials after he gets Zayn’s voicemail, and someone finally picks it up after the third ring.

“Hey, whoever this is, Zayn is busy” a feminine sounding voice says and Niall is caught off guard by the sudden annoyed tone all but judging him through the phone lines.

“Sorry then, just wanted to know if he wanted a pint down at Louis’”

“Told you, he’s a little busy tonight” She says, this time with a slight giggle. Niall hears a muffle of man voice in the background. 

“Okay, well nice talking to ya. Can you just let him know I miss his face over at the pub, alright?”

“Yeah, sure.” She says and the connection is cut.

-

Another week passes with no sign of Zayn, and Niall starts spending unhealthy amounts of time pondering where the hell that man is. The curosity is brought to a peak when  Liam strolls into the pub alone one evening. Because Niall hasn’t known Liam for long- but the he at least knows that it’s nearly impossible to get Liam drunk, neverless _to drink_ willingly unless Zayn is literally right there with puppy eyes and a ‘get wasted with me and talk about life pls’ kind of face that Niall is sure no sane human is immune to.

“What’s the craic?” Niall starts, grabbing two bottles and checks for a Louis before leaping over the counter and grabbing a seat next to the gloomy faced man. Not exactly a good idea for Niall to be doing gymnastics only two days after he finally ditched his crutches, but it’s easier than trying to work that stupid half door open.

"Ah it's Zayn." Liam mutters and Niall's attention almost explodes. Yes. The breakthrough he needed. 

“He moved out of ‘is flat yesterday." Liam goes on, "And I’m worried about him, asked if he wanted to stay at my place until he found a job but he refused. I just hope it wasn’t because I mentioned he should pay back the rent he owes…I didn’t mean it to sound mean, just I have a job and I said it back when he had one too”

“It’s kay mate, I doubt he moved out just cos you asked about rent,” Niall takes a swing “So yanno where’s he at now?” He asks and tries to not make it sound like he’s using his friend’s misery to get whereabouts on Zayn for his own personal gain.

“That’s what I’m also worried about! He just packed his stuff and left, tried calling but his phone disconnected yesterday. He doesn’t like to leech off people- even if they’re his best mates since childhood and only care about his well being” Liam lets out a frustrated groan and slumps against the counter top. 

“Wonder if he’s staying over at that girl’s house?” Niall says, absentmindedly and remembering the feminine sounding voice combined with Louis’ words from a week ago. “He wouldn’t be leeching if they’re doing it,” he adds in with a more monotone sounding accent than he meant.

“Crap that’s probably it.”

-

Zayn is staying with a girl- she has cotton candy colored hair and has bubblegum glossed lips to match her snappy personality and pinup figure.

He likes the twenty something- met her while applying for a job at some corner shop and after some intense eye sex from across the room they got to talking. Talking lead to promising and promising lead to waking up the next morning tangled in each other’s bodies with little regret and surprisingly little awkwardness, the promise of something more still hanging over them from yesterday’s evening conversation.

He moves out of the flat he’s owned for a little over a year, feeling bad about declining Liam’s saddened face so he promises to call when he gets around to paying his phone bill and visit once he gets a tank of gas for his motorcycle. He doesn’t know how long this thing between Perrie and him will last, but he decides to give it a try because he’s hungry and out of options besides being in debt to Liam or taking up hours at Louis’s again.

And it works, the thing between the two of them. He looks for a job, they have a lot of sex and it’s not the best he’s ever had- but it’s up there and Perrie is a nice pit of emotions and breasts to talk to when he’s stressed and horny; which is essentially a lot nowadays.

Perrie beat him out for the job at the corner shop, working evenings stacking shelves as well as spending early mornings at her cousin’s hairdressing salon. Zayn does some tattoos for men who aren’t willing to pay shop prices and it’s less than he made working at the shop, and he has to borrow his friend’s machine because his tattooing gun is still at Louis’. So they have money, not a ton but more than Zayn’s ever made by himself.

And they work out the low-income thing well, having this moment of peace and dare he say love until suddenly they don’t.

It’s three am, when everything he had with this girl started collapsing under the obnoxiously loud sex noises on the couch while Zayn laid awake and alone in their bed wondering why his life had to contain so much drama, he just wanted to draw things and make out with people. He listens to the cries of ecstasy until he’s sick of hearing confessions of love and longing coming from the woman he’d just fucked five hours ago, deciding to deal with it in the morning and then promptly falling back asleep.

He rolls out of the bed and almost wishes he could fall back asleep, but wills himself to wake up and make way into her kitchen, not feeling right to call it theirs anymore when she obviously isn’t even his. But then again what does Zayn even have nowadays to call his?

Thankfully she brings it up first, handing Zayn a cup of steaming coffee and gesturing him towards the small table on tiled flooring. He notices how there is literally no trace of the man, stealing a sideways glance to the couch only to find it neatly put together despite how he had sworn it must’ve broken in two last night.

“Zayn, we need to talk.” She says and Zayn should be freaking the fuck out, because anyone knows what a girl means when she says those four words. But the thing is, he’s not freaking out- not even mildly. His hands stay steady against the ceramic cup, thumbs running themselves over the smooth surface as she explains the love story between a girl with pink hair and a man foreign to him with green eyes and a loving persona. They separated for a few weeks to better understand the concept of love- as the story goes, only to find the girl had fallen for a tattooed bad boy who needed a home whilst she just needed a warm body to fill the loss of that green-eyed boy.

He gets what she means by this, kicking him out in the nicest way possible because her old boyfriend is back and her missing him outweighs whatever she felt for Zayn in the past few weeks. She doesn’t ask what he’s going to do about being homeless, and Zayn doesn’t want bring it up and make her feel guilty about all this. There’s no screaming and that’s good, he always pictured her as one to start screaming her emotional angst at him once they fell.

So he just chugs the coffee, strong and gross compared to tea and refuses to flinch as it scorches its way down his throat and pools in a sad little mess at the bottom of his stomach. Perrie helps him pack his things, not much more than a suitcase containing a few tee shirts, sweatpants Niall bought for him and his battered sketchbook. It’s a quiet affair, and they end up not even saying goodbye, Zayn pulling out of the parking lot without a backwards glance and Perrie shutting the door before he could.

He knows he has friends with houses he can ask to crash at, but Zayn knows himself better than that and figures he’ll give in only once he’s keeled over in hunger and ready to start selling crack at the corner or prostituting his body for money at that same corner. Or both. He vaguely wonders if he’s ever meet a drug dealer who doubles as a hooker. ‘Would you like to pay to have a fuck with me? After we have sex I can sell you heroin and then we can fuck some more.’ It seems like such a promising financial career. Ha.

-

It’s been almost two months since Niall has seen dark and tattooed, artsy and geeky, the guy that practically saved his life once upon that time. He doesn’t think about him as much anymore, thoughts consumed by other topics like food and how blissed out he is to find that a Nandos opened up only two blocks from his college campus, that’s like, within walking distance.

 Sometimes he’ll be biking past that one tattooing joint named “Black dragon’ or something equally corny, and his mind will start to idly wonder if that’s what Zayn is doing now, tattooing his dream away in some city where people respect his art and he gets paid enough to not visit his mates and blond haired acquaintance back in London. Then Niall will remember the lonely little lump of ink and  tattooing supplies settled up against Louis’ spare bedroom wall, protected in a blue canvas bag but looking lost and abandoned without an owner to care about the dust settling on its surface. That’s how he realizes Zayn can’t live his dream without his love.

Niall knows that Liam’s been worried about the dark haired man since he cut the housing contract, moving out with a sad smile and twenty pounds in his wallet. Harry misses his friend, and chooses to expresses those thoughts verbally, or until Louis chimes in with reassurance that Zayn is a Zayn and Zaynes will always find their way home… like a dog.

So overall, Niall deals by pushing him to a place in the back of his mind labeled ‘Hot Blokes that I Never Had a Chance with Anyways.’ And that’s okay, because Niall is a proud, independent Irishman who certainly don’t need no chocolate flavored man to hold at nighttime when his flat is just a little too cold and empty for his comfort. Or especially not when his mind starts to wonder what it would be like to have someone there that would just unconditionally love you, not minding all your stupid quirks because it’s just what makes you, _you_. He’s not a teenage girl desperate for a boyfriend, damnit.

Strangely enough, he’s having this mental rant with himself over his non-existent love life when it happens. 

It’s that time of day where the sun is retiring over the horizon of churches and factories, the streets filled with people trying to squeeze every last bit of daylight into finishing their errands and scurrying back home before the darkness really sets in. Niall is doing the same, shuffling through cobblestone walkways older than his grandparents in an attempt to get back to his flat before it’s late and the time of night that you don’t your kids outside during.

He’s obviously failing though, because those thoughts are ragging at him constantly and he’s walking slower than normal, bumping into people and objects more than usual because apparently Niall can’t think deeply about his sexuality while maintaining a constant talent of walking in a straight  line before he ends up tripping over something and falling flat on his face.

Which actually manages to happens about one block later while walking through a dark alley that he thought would be a nice shortcut to his overall destination of a warm shower and much needed snuggle time with his cat.  His foot gets caught on something long and stupidly spread out across the already minuscule width of the alley, getting in the way of Niall’s walking space. It’s a comically slow fall, limbs flailing everywhere par usual until his body meets the stone in a harsh embrace that was definitely not welcomed anymore than the blood dripping out of his cheek from where it meets a fragment of some litterbug’s pile of broken bottles.

He screams, because fuck, that hurts. Ignoring the pain spreading throughout his face for now, he works on spitting out the gravel that collected at his lips, cursing at how he was doing so well at this not getting hurt thing up until now.

It’s when he rolls himself off his stomach and onto his back that he’s met with a terrifying sight of harsh metal contours and a barrel aimed towards his temples that may or may not have caused him to figuratively shit his trousers.

He’s Niall Horan and there is a fucking gun pointed to his head.

He doesn’t have much time to scream like a pre-teen girl again, or even look at who the hell is pointing a gun at him before his face is meeting the ground once again, this time sideways smashed by someone’s boot. Waves of pain shoot through his already bleeding face, and he’s really hoping that there isn’t a chunk of glass that’ll have to be surgically removed being drove into his flesh.

It’s actually not-so strangely reminiscent to that first time he got his chest slit open and shamelessly mugged except this time there is a gun and he doesn’t think the survival rate of those things are very high.  

Maybe even after living here for a few months the English streets just really want him to be so cosmetically damaged that no doctor will be able to repair him, with all the smashing of his face against these streets.  He’s knocked out of his thoughts (and his breath) when the boot’s owner starts spitting out angry sentences at him.

“Go tell James I am fucking done with this bloody shit load of a business! That tosser needs to learn that sending over his stupid arse little fucker helpers is not going to fucking change my mind about getting my ass fuc-” He pauses, and Niall doesn’t want to open his eyes to guess why. Until he starts talking again, and yeah, that’s a little familiar actually.

“Oh wait, bloody hell…is that you blonde?” It says and suddenly Niall is filled with all stupid anger that replaces his scared-shitless thoughts in less than a second after he connects the voice to those confused hazel eyes he’s staring into.

“Bloody fecking hell Zayn! Get yeh damn foot out of my face!” Said man stares at him with a dazed look for a few seconds before abruptly dropping the semi-automatic, and removing his foot. He helps the livid Irishman to his feet with sleep heavy muscles and remorse painting his already stubble covered face.

 “Fuck, I’m bloody sorry mate” He frowns, eyebrows knitted together in an attempt to understand what Niall was doing here anyways.

“Ya fucker, can’t just go around smashing people’s faces into roads and pointing guns and shit at their head! Scared the bloody shit out of me damnit.” Niall cries, but he’s not all to irritated as his words are making it seem because there are bags under Zayn’s eyes and it looks like he hasn’t shaved in weeks with the attire to match.

He watches as the man in front of him just calmly shoves the gun back into his waistband and wonders how Zayn managed to get himself into this situation. Although he isn’t wondering for long with Zayn’s cold hand suddenly flush against his cheek, and he doesn’t even flinch at that because frankly half of his face is numb.

“’Damnit, Niall your face is bleeding. And why are you walking through alleys again?  Thought you would’ve at least learned something by now” Zayn says with his voice sounding obviously raw and worn compared to how Niall last remembered hearing it.

“Yeah, well I had to feed my cat” Niall defends; wincing when Zayn skillfully swipes the glass out of his skin and hearing it drop to the ground with a stupidly loud clink.

“Ouch, fuck you. Now tell me why you decided to become hobo” He says, shoving Zayn’s hand away because it’s not helping him ignore the pain his face is experiencing any less.

The man just shrugs, “I was actually on my way to Liam’s- just got caught up in something I shouldn’t have and didn’t feel like getting anyone else involved.” Zayn says and strokes his newly produced facial hair with slight interest.

“Okay” Niall says, accepting his answer easily and it throws Zayn off for the reason that he was so ready to lie about everything he’s been through in the past months.

“Now come on,” Niall sighs and tries to not scratch his face. “get yer fit arse going because Fluffs is hungry and I don’t want to deal with anymore complaints of dying cat noises coming from my flat.”

“No Niall, really go to the doctors and get stitches or something.” He says pointing out the blood trailing down to Niall’s neck.

“And just leave you here?” Niall says sarcastically, pointing out Zayn’s state of homelessness and acquaintance with a dumpster.

“I’m fine-” He starts to say, words being cut off by Niall grabbing his arm and leading him down the now-darkened alley.

“Sure ya are” He hums and Zayn is too tired to resist so he just grabs his suitcase and follows after the shadow of blond hair and limbs tangled up in a hoodie too lightweight for tonight’s weather anyways.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aha this is getting way too long but enjoy a filler chapter xx

Zayn bullied Niall into stopping at the 24hr clinic, so thanks to him they had taken an hour-long detour and now Niall has two liquid stitches, fifty pounds missing from his bank account and a starving animal probably clawing out his new couch in an attempt to eat the cheap leather back at his flat.

They walk in through the door and yeah actually, his Fluffs is trying to claw out the sitting area.

“Get off the couch cat, I have food” Niall says, shooing the ball of fluff towards where he stores the stacks of tuna; because his cat is one classy motherfucker who apparently won’t eat anything that isn’t wet and gross and previously swimming in the ocean.

“Cute” Zayn comments when the ball of grey fluff at green eyes starts rubbing up against his leg. He takes a seat on that awesome swirly stool Niall bought as a pair while Niall busies himself with satisfying his adorably demonic cat. He puts on a kettle too, because damn, Niall has never seen a man so in need of a cup of Earl Grey before Zayn showed up with his dirt-smothered jeans and hair that could’ve been put through multiple rounds of sexual activates and not looked any different than it currently did.

“Right? T’was a stray, kept looking in through my windows like she needed a friend- Or maybe just food. But I’m not one to judge her story, so now she lives here and I pay fifteen a week on litter and tuna.” Niall says. “She cuddles with me; I think it’s a good deal”

 Zayn quirks his lips in a pursed little smile while Niall hands him a cup of tea.  He pours one for himself too and then perches cross-legged on the counter top cos the swirly chair’s accomplice split in half last weekend after Niall had just a little too much fun twirling himself around on the piece of cheap crap.

They drink tea and it’s bliss for Zayn who really fucking missed warm beverages. Niall asks what he’s been up too, being gone for so long without contacting anyone and really what is that about? It kinda makes Niall feel like he’s just won a game of ‘Where’s Waldo’ except it’s more likely to be named ‘Where’s Zayn’ and what the hell has he been doing for the past two months.

It turns out Zayn has been doing a lot, and by a lot Niall means Perrie of course. Zayn elaborates on their short-termed relationship, starting from meeting the girl that first week, to meeting her demanding ex-boyfriend and watching it all fall apart. Niall listens patiently for once and refrains from cracking any jokes, even if he really had no interest in hearing Zayn explain how she was essentially ‘really good for fucking, just not loving.’ And that’s cool, Niall thinks, because he always pegged Zayn as a one night stand type of guy when it came to relationships.

The passion just wasn’t there, Zayn explains to him and it’s a five minute explanation, so by the end of it Niall concludes that Zayn is probably the only man on earth who could talk about the principles of love so sincerely and have it not sound like a paragraph from some sappy romance novel. Even though Niall doesn’t really mind romance novels and thinks Zayn would make a pretty great Fabio.

It ends with Niall just nodding along to whatever Zayn is saying and trying not to talk smack about a girl he’s never met, only because he looks like he’s already over it and doesn’t need any input on his ‘short but meaningful’ relationship. But for the record, Niall thinks she’s a bitch who used the first willing man she could find for sex and comfort while her and her boyfriend were on break.

“So after that I moved out of her place, did a few odd jobs for people and stayed in that crappy motel a few roads down.”

“The one that smells like piss, sex and regret?” Niall smiles easy and Zayn nods with a slight grin attached to his otherwise sober face.

Zayn holds the mug of tea close to his upper chest, as if to transfer all the heat and comfort he possibly can into himself through the ceramic cup before it goes room temperature. “That one exactly, it was going great too- I almost had enough cash to pay Liam back.”

Niall really looks at his face then, sees the underlining of heavy eyes and noticeably chapped lips, leisurely blowing concentrated puffs of air into the tea as if he would if there was a cigarette clasped between his teeth instead of the empty air. He looks older, eyebrows heavy and jaw set, and Niall is thinking about how funny this is that they are the same age, yet at completely different levels. But age isn’t something to be judged by only physical time and that’s what trips Niall up usually.

 “What happened t’en?” Niall asks, his voice softer than usual with the sole attempt to help calm Zayn’s eyebrows into looking like they weren’t ready to leap off his face and cut a bitch.

A lot of things happened after that, Zayn thinks, remembering the night it really started. It was a week after he broke it off with Perrie; he was cold, hungry and pissed off at life in general after a painfully long day of moving suspicious crates across town and getting paid jack shit to do so. But it was something.

He remembers thumbing the cash around in his pocket, cold fingers bending the edges of twenty pound bills, anxious to just screw life and collapse into the shitty motel mattress with what little being he has left to his name. Truthfully he missed his art, his tattooing job and everything that it included. Sometimes he swears that if he and his old boss ever managed to cross paths again it won’t be turning out any prettier than the aftermath of one of his old co-worker’s sloppy tattoos- bloody and half-assed.

It’s the night that he’s considering driving twenty minutes down to Louis’ just so he can drink good beer and see his mates again. Louis would’ve paid his tab and he could’ve bitched about his life to that little cheerful and wonderfully provocative blond behind the bar’s counter.

He’s walking up the concrete steps, wondering if he should just follow through with his thoughts and go running home to Liam when he starts hearing the obscene hollers and cackling coming from a bunch of muscle heads that resemble a pack of hyenas rather than actual grown men. He’s not paying much attention to them, learning how to tune out men like them long ago. He only really starts to pay attention once he hears his name being called from across the parking lot in sarcastic laughter, and that’s usually not a tone you use with acquaintances.

“Oi Malik! Check it out” They snicker and Zayn doesn’t notice anything overly unusual with the scene until he does.

“God damnit.” He curses through gritted teeth, resisting the urge to yank out his semi-auto and put bullets through all of their heads in reaction to the sight laid out before him.

“Come on! Check it out- we removed your _training wheels_ ” They call before bursting out into a fit of giggles like teenaged white girls obsessing over their favorite boy band. 

He should ignore them, he should leave and not get involved with the five very large and very scary looking men challenging him with smirks that have the familiar sentences of ‘whatcha gonna do bout it Malik?’ written over every single pair of cigarette clasped lips.

He should just clench his teeth and turn around, walk inside the lobby and steal some vodka from the couple who fucks in the room next to his, forgetting about what he sees and forgetting that he should’ve went back to Liam’s the day Perrie kicked him out.

He doesn’t.

Zayn’s hands are still in his pockets, though this time they’re caressing the edges of cold metal and bullet chambers.

“You like it?” One guy says and gestures to his motorcycle. “ _I_ like it” A different man chimes in, commenting on the exquisite use of broken glass to carve derogatory slang into the leather seats and everywhere else that the paint could be scraped away and replaced with words.

“See, it says you’re a faggot. A little bitch with shit colored skin and ass licking friends,”

More laughter rings out and Zayn is going to puke blood lust and shrapnel.

“Shit skin, that’s gold.”

Zayn clenches and unclenches his fist around the gun’s grip but refuses to say anything, already regretting the decision to honor their work of trashing his bike by acknowledging it physically.  They’re stumbling towards him, slurring about being a terrorist and it’s just words, just a meaningless collection of sounds and letters that Zayn has heard too many times in this lifetime to dwell on.

He’s done. He can replace the motorcycle with a better model once he gets a steady job, he can set aside his anger for these crack heads with cheap vodka and the notion that someday when he isn’t outnumbered and fueled by solely stress and sleep deprivation- he’ll murder them all. One by one, unexpectedly and easy because he can smash all their worthless heads into the pavement and not have a second of guilt hanging around for the rest of his life.

His expression is calm and he doesn’t even clenches his jaws together, calmly twisting on his heels and walking back to the smoke filled, drug ridden entrance of the motel.

One of the men chucks a slab of the broken windshield at his back, and that’s when he almost loses it, hand twitching against his semi automatic and chest involuntarily curling into itself from the impact of a two inch thick plastic slab hurled straight into his shoulder blades.

It sends jolts of pain throughout his whole upper body and misses his neck by inches, his leathery jacket protecting what’s underneath from the sharp edges, but that doesn’t do anything to stop the internal bleeding he’ll surely receive from the huge ass bruise forming under his skin.

They don’t follow him after that, just chuckling and the pain he’s in and calling out a “Think twice before you involve yourself in someone else’s fight Malik”

He eventually makes it up to his room, refusing to slump against the elevator wall since he probably won’t be able to stand back up. Breathing heavy and in complete agony he locks the door and wishes he had the will to shove a dresser in front of the door- but collapses onto his bed before that ever happens. It’s bad, that much he knows; but he’s not paralyzed and he’s sure it the skin of his back isn’t broken open, so instead of getting ice to soothe the pain he just continues shoving malodorous smelling sheets into his face in a sad attempt to muffle out the noises his mouth is unwillingly forming.

It’s hell for the entire time it takes for him to be able to stand without immediately collapsing, and he wishes he had his cell phone because hell is so much worse when you feel like you’re the only one in it.

But even when it passes and he walks, Hell still seems to fancy Zayn, adores him even. Two weeks after he loses the only possession he held closer than his tattooing equipment he finds out that the guys who trashed his bike and left a six inch welt on his back were Heroin kid and Dread head’s mob, or more like cult-like followers. But he guesses that from the what they were screaming at him about not getting involved in other people’s business, what’s worse than that though is that apparently trashing his bike wasn’t enough to satisfy their need of avenging their (actually still alive and kicking) gang brothers.

They break into his room, he finds returning to the door broken off its hinges and bullshit messages scrawled onto the wall with cheap spray paint. After the third time it happens, at the third motel he’s slept at that week, he finally gets kicked out and told to settle his ordeals before trying to get a room ever again.

So he moves into the homeless shelter, almost gets his ass raped a grand total of five times before meeting a guy that goes by James and pays him seventy pounds a day. He ditches the shelter and sleeps in James’ basement along with five other drug-addicted teens that ran away at sixteen and are a part of the man’s other business. Zayn stays away from that one; no matter how many times James tries to bribe him with hourly wages that have almost four times the payout he made being an artist.

Overall it’s a good deal, and the guys from before have seemed to move their grudge onto another target because he doesn’t see them around anymore. Maybe that’s just because James is scary as hell when he wants to be.  He has enough money saved, and with the gangsters off his back he’s planning on moving back into his old apartment as soon as he can manage to shrug off James.

Just one more job, James reasons when Zayn tells him he wants out-and he goes along with it because he’s rather be leaving on James’ good side if it’s anything he could help. Even though he’s homesick as hell and misses his mates like crazy.

They’re driving for hours until they reach another city, better than where Zayn lives but still filled with rugged people and tough blokes who have reputations to keep up on.

It’s supposed to be easy, just delivering packages from street to street. “Watch out for the cops” Is all the advice James gives to Zayn, leaving him in a van with tinted windows and bundles of duct-taped containers hidden underneath the seats.

He wasn’t stupid, just a little desperate for money when he took up James’ offer in the first place.

It’s going great until complications start showing up in the form of black vans and the same damn kid riding an electric blue bicycle on three separate streets,  and Zayn ends up ditching the van in a McDonald’s parking lot. He checks into a motel and phones James from the reception desk only to find that he left hours ago and wasn’t coming back. He hangs up calmly and walks back to the room he spent all of today’s money paying for.

He’s beyond pissed. It takes him three days to trek back into London, only stopping to collapse in some stupid alleyway and sleep for two days straight until a certain blonde-haired man managed to trip over his sad remains.

-

Zayn looks up from swirling liquid and into the anxious blue eyes belonging to Niall. “Oh god did yeh start doing drugs and didn’t want us to find out you’re an addict?”

“What, no? I just got my cycle fucked up and couldn’t get a ride back here till yesterday.” Zayn replies, simplifying the whole month of drama and money angst he put himself through with a sentence and shake of his head.

“Oh, well I’m glad you’re not a junkie. And man that sucks about your bike, find out what asshole did it?”

“Asshole _s_. Yeah, I did.” Zayn decides to leave out the part about them being the same people who fucked Niall up, switching the subject swiftly. “S’what happened while I was out, anyone miss me?”

“I miss’d ya! The pub’s been gloomy with Liam moping around all the time and Harry making the same jokes without you there to criticize him”

“Sorry that must have been painful” Zayn sets the mug down and stretches his back, incredibly sore from the gravel ground and still bruised nastily; sleeping on the ground hasn’t helped any to heal it. “Can I use your phone? I feel like I owe Liam an apology.”

“After you go take a shower or sumthing, I don’t want hobo germs on my new cell. It has a touch screen and everything.” Niall says matter of factly and jumps down from the counter top.

Zayn’s going to complain, but actually a hot shower sounds amazing right about now, and Niall is already shoving him into the bathroom so it’s not like he can just say no to someone so determined right?

“M’kay strip” Niall says smiles as he ushers Zayn into his flat’s only bathroom.  He’s mostly joking, so when Zayn starts unzipping his hoodie with that completely emotionless look plastered across his face Niall almost has a full-on heart attack. He’s afraid he’s going to need hospitalization or something, from the way Zayn is just casually shedding off layers of clothing and it shouldn’t look that hot because the brunette has been practically cuddling a dumpster, and he’s way too skinny and way too caked in mud. But Niall likes cake, and he figures the thing with Zayn Malik is that even if you take away his razor, hair products and shower for a month he’ll still manage to look like a porn star- just a very hairy porn star.

Niall doesn’t even realize he’s still smiling dumbly at his accomplishment of getting a strip show until he notices how Zayn isn’t.

“Shite” Zayn is saying, looking down at his bare arm and it’s enough to snap Niall out of the ‘preoccupation with that man’s perfect body’ state his mind unwilling slipped into for a minute there.

“What? Oh. Damn, Zayn.” He says and gently clutches his arm, inspecting the dried blood that smeared itself inches above from where his tattoos cling onto his wrist and forearm.

“I wonder when that happened” Zayn muses distantly and stares at the four-inch gash wrapping itself around his arm.

“Ew I hope it s’not infected” Niall shuffles around in the bathroom cabinets until he finds a decent washcloth. “I guess there’s no point in bandaging it when yer just gonna shower” he says and makes sure that there isn’t anything lodged in Zayn’s arm still.

-

“Morning” Niall yawns, following the scent of food into his kitchen and taking a seat up on the counter like last night.

“I hope you don’t mind I used all your bacon” Zayn says and hands Niall a cup of coffee.

“Damn Zayn, if you’re willing to cook for me then stay forever please” Niall says and takes a sip of the hot liquid.

“Really?”

“Sure, I’ve always wanted a roommate” He says and Zayn cracks the first real smile Niall has seen from him in ages.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hopefully I'll stop thinking of ideas to shove into this fic before it turns into a 60,000 word monster of ust
> 
> sorry

“Zayn, check it out!” Niall says, practically bouncing through their front door with a crumpled neon flyer clutched in his hand.

Zayn looks up from where he was absentmindedly doodling in his sketchbook, coffee in hand and still rubbing sleep from his eyes when Niall barrels into their kitchen; (it took a few weeks but he’s gotten used to calling the various parts of the flat theirs rather than just Niall’s.)

“What’s up Niallers?”  He asks and sets his coffee out of harm’s way. The said blond plops down on the couch and practically glues himself to Zayn’s side.  He was uncomfortable with all the touching this boy had put him through when he first moved in- and it especially used to be awkward when Niall would just jump up on him like this and cuddle him to death. But since then he’s gotten far too used to it, not even thinking twice when Niall almost knocks the sketchbook out of his hand trying to get comfortable on Zayn’s sweatpants-clad lap.

“Check this out” He smiles finally and hands Zayn the flyer he ripped off the grocery store’s bulletin board.

Zayn’s eyes skim the sheet “There’s a new tattooing place opening up?”

“And they’re looking for artists~” Niall says in that sing song-ish voice he uses when he’s excited about something.

“Man that’s awesome.” He smiles and ruffles Niall’s hair in a thanks that Niall takes without hesitation.

He may be sorta happy that he decided to move in the flat.

-

Zayn gets the job as a main tattoo artist at the new place easily, mostly because having five years of experience and an amazing portfolio seems to help a lot. The shop is great- the owners a friendly middle aged couple and Zayn is beyond grateful that there seems to be an absence of bossy managers to deal with. One of his co-worker from his old job even quits to come work at the new, more sanitary and less stress filled place and. 

The boys celebrate Zayn’s new job with many pints at the pub and he actually pays for all of his friends to get piss drunk with him this time. It’s nice and everything is so amazingly drama free that Zayn is almost suspicious of the sudden blissfully calm scene surrounding him. His life was never this calm- even since he was a kid there has always been something to deal with at any given moment.

Maybe it was a gift for having to spend three months alone on the streets- but then again at fourteen, he spent half a year crawling through these same streets with smoke clouded visions and a goal to live fast and die high. He didn’t get a break when he came home from that time, finding divorced parents and his sister ditching what was left of their family for a man ten years older.

It’ s just that he’s gotten so used to his life falling apart every other day, that even when it’s the five of them kicking back together drinking cold beers he can’t help himself to be anything but be cautious of what’s going to come up next.

“Zayhhn! I asked you something” Harry frowns and it combined with Niall doing his familiar habit of poking people’s shoulder when they zone out- or maybe just Zayn’s shoulder- snaps him out of his thoughts.

He might as well enjoy the peace while it lasts.

-

He and Niall stumble through the streets on their way back to the flat that night- much to Louis’ protesting to just stay the night, but Niall has classes tomorrow and Zayn finally has a job he gets to wake up at seven for.

He’s unlocking the door when Niall states a “Yanno I’m really glad I don’t have to walk home alone anymore,” his accent heavy and happy, filling the stale air of their flat with just a simple phrase. Zayn’s going to reply, but Niall shuts him up with a sloppy kiss to his cheek that lasts longer than it would’ve taken to mumble out a ‘Me too.’ The Irish boy finishes and gives him a wide smile and a drunken wave before bouncing off to his own room.

Zayn stands there with a strange feeling in his stomach for at least three minutes before he decides to disregard both the action and that weird feeling in his body to the insane amount of alcohol they consumed earlier. Shrugging off his shirt, he collapses onto his own bed with no farther thoughts.

After that night, he might accidentally start paying more attention to his flat mate. It’s unconscious at best but he’s still trying to rid the phantom feeling of wet lips at his cheeks whenever Niall’s face ends up anywhere near his head.

-

It’s a Sunday night when they go out clubbing, well Liam, Niall and Zayn go out clubbing- the other two fifths of their little circle working at the pub instead. Or more likely sucking each other off in the back room while Louis shouts at the new barista to deal with his thirsty customers.

Niall’s practically bouncing with excitement (and possibly a lot of caffeine.) With collage homework and regular work he has barely been out dancing, save for the amateur campus parties he sometimes crashes with Josh. 

Niall practically begs Zayn for help with getting his hair to stick up in a quiff, and Zayn laughs because please- sculpting your hair into a quiff is a process of art that Niall is so not ready to take on, by himself anyways. He finds him in the bathroom with hands covered in hardening gel and face pouted at Zayn’s comical expression towards his situation.

It takes effort, but together they manage to make his hair stick up in all the right places and Zayn is pleased with his work, even if they break two combs and use up half a bottle of gel in the process.

“It looks fabulous Nialler”

Niall flashes him a genuine grin that Zayn tries not to dwell on and then Liam’s car is honking from the driveway.  They hurry to shove some money in their pockets and try to make it out the door before Liam gets irritated and leaves without them.

Zayn used to go clubbing a lot more, back when he needed a fake I.D and the people he associated with certainly didn’t. And by clubbing he means he used to deal ecstasy to horny teenagers in-between heated mouth fucking and sweaty bodies. He’s never taken the pills himself, never wanted to, and quit selling them when the guys he worked for over-dosed on a combination of everything and died in front of him. That left seventeen-year-old Zayn fairly freaked out and out of the club scene for a while at least.  Since then he’s only gone out when looking for a girl to take home or if Louis decided to insult his introverted-ness by dragging him along with the other boys.

It’s loud the second they walk in, dark and neon flashing at them all at once and cramped with bodies. There’s pop music pumping through huge speakers plastered to various walls and it’s not all to trashy. Actually, It’s one of the nicer clubs he hasn’t been to in a long time, having to drive almost half an hour to find one Liam-worthy because supposedly getting drugs slipped into your drinks on more than one occasion really takes a toll on a person’s choice of clubs.

It’s a few shots later and Niall is buzzing even more with the newly added alcohol falling into his veins. There is something about clubbing that he just adores, especially in London where you don’t know every person you’re grinding up against personally.

Liam comes up behind him with another shot that he downs with a grin. “Where’s Zee at?” Niall asks causally and tries not to crease his eyebrows to deeply when Liam points out the dark brunette dancing alongside two redheads.

He can dance with anyone he wants; Niall reminds himself, setting the shot glass down and man handling Liam onto the dance floor.

It’s all fun and games dancing like a lunatic with Liam at his side- until the presence of boobs start to appear in his frontal vision and no thank you. He inches away in a manner that looks like he’s just preoccupied with the color-changing tiles a few feet away from him but really it’s a defense mechanism.

“Hi I’m Shaniqua!” She shouts at him over the music, and who the hell names their white-as-a-snowflake child that?

He doesn’t really see the point in being rude to a complete stranger so he shouts back a half-hearted reply “That’s such a ghetto name! I’m Niall.”

She laughs in reply and get’s up right close to his face, whispering a “That’s just my stage name” And oh. OH.  Niall sees how it is.

He tries doing that inching away maneuver again- but then her small but curvy frame very suddenly occupies his side and starts moving in a way that is less in beat to the popish music and more like a cat in heat.

Liam flashes him a smile full of encouragement and Niall gives him an unenthusiastic wave before shimming away back to the bar where he wonders deeply on why females always feel the need to rub their bodies all over him when all he wants to do is have fun and dance with people in a completely platonic way.

Well actually, he doesn’t wonder on it for too long because maybe in London the point of going out dancing is to have people of the opposite sex rub their bodies over yours. It’s kinda too bad that Niall isn’t completely out here like he was back at home. Sure Louis knows he’s gay, because Louis was the first person Niall ran to (well video chatted with) when he realized that his crush on Justin Bieber was less of a “I want to be like you one day” and more of a “I want you to be naked and on top of me one day.’

Since Louis has known for years that probably means Harry knows, but Niall doubts they told anyone. He’s kinda been meaning to mention it to Liam and Zayn- especially Zayn. But then the straight-as-an-arrow brunette moved into his flat, leaving Niall freaked out that if he says anything about liking dicks not chicks it could leave things awkward between them and then Zayn wouldn’t be so willing to partake in the nonsexual and completely platonic cuddle sessions he’s so carefully crafted between them.  He especially doesn’t want to lose those, it taking such a long time to get Zayn to actually cuddle back instead of just freezing up whenever Niall so much as swung an arm around his shoulder.

So if keeping Zayn comfortable with giving him neck massages and falling asleep on the couch together costs Niall acting straight, so be it.

He chugs down another fruity flavored shot and meets back up with Liam on the dance floor, hoping Shaniqua isn’t gonna jump him from behind.

Zayn meets up with them a few minutes later, the same strawberry blonde twins in tow from before. “Having fun?” He asks.

“Yeah te clubs here are awesome” Niall says and the music is really too loud to elaborate, plus one of the girls hanging off Zayn’s arm seems to take an interest in him, if the way she’s slowly hiking her skirt up in his direction is anything to go by.

“So who’s this cute thing?” She says and detaches herself from Zayn completely.

“I’m Niall” He says and wonders if he should shake her hand or something to keep it from snaking around his waist.

Ah fuck, too late.

“Sandy” She says in his ear and hello déjà vu. He doesn’t push her away like he did with the ghetto stripper because Zayn is standing two feet in front of him making suggestive eye gestures and he doesn’t have the chance to say anything else before Sandy shouts “Omg this is my song!” As the latest Katy Perry remix fills the club with pounding bass and equally excited shouts coming from her accomplice.

Niall mentally shrugs, because hey it’s a good song and he’s buzzed as hell.

He’s dancing mostly with himself, or at least in his mind because he’s trying his best to ignore the sweaty mess of low cut shirt and sparkles grinding up against his front.

It’s when she turns to face him that he starts to groan,  because she’s really grabby; all perfectly manicured nails lacing themselves through his hair as that female shaped face keeps getting closer and closer by the second.

She must have mistaken his groan for a moan though, because Niall’s already shrinking personal bubble pops the second she presses her lips to his.  It’s not like he’s never kissed a girl, because he has and it’s not that much different from kissing a guy- anatomically speaking anyways.

She keeps on trying to shove her tongue into his mouth, and he keeps on wanting to pull away and say something like ‘no thank you’ but that girl has a titanium-vice gripped in on his hair that only lets up once they break for breath.

“Wow” she breathes, just in time for Niall to catch Zayn’s eye before she ignites shoving their faces together again.

-

Niall ends up having to endure the thirty-minute car ride home alone with Liam and his jokes alone- mostly because Liam is joking about how Zayn is going home with twins tonight while Niall is going home to a cat.  But Niall likes his cat and is just happy that Zayn isn’t fucking his female friends in their flat, even if that means Niall will possibly have to drive out tomorrow and pick up a hung-over Zayn.

“Thanks leeyum, tonight was a blast” Niall says in goodbye and hurries up to his flat before the wind starts to numb his sleeveless arms.

He actually doesn’t have to wait until tomorrow to see Zayn again, because sometime around three am the front door opens and Niall snaps wakes up to the obnoxiously loud thump and swearing coming from the hallway, signaling either Zayn’s arrival or a break in.

He wills himself out of bed for whatever reason and spots Zayn nursing a bruised ankle on the hallway’s floor. “Didn’t feel like sticking around till mornin’?” He yawns, standing at his door in Spiderman boxers and a loose white tee shirt that has a high chance of actually belonging to Zayn since they gave up on doing laundry correctly a while ago.

“T’ey don live too far ‘way” Zayn says in a slur instead of giving up proper answer, taking caution to lift himself up from where he tripped over a vacuum and hoping one-footed until he catches his balance again.

Niall hums in response and is turning back into his room since there is no threat of a burglar, just a fairly drunk Zayn. “Why didn’tya come with us? Sandeh t’was really into you yanno”

“I could tell” He grimaces at the memory.

“But why didn’t ya go’ome with ‘er?”

 Niall tries to will his sleep clouded thinking into thinking up a response that doesn’t include anything like, _I really don’t like vagina_ within it, finally deciding on “I don’t fancy gingers much.”

He figures Zayn is wasted so it shouldn’t matter much as to what he says but still blames his stupid answer on the inability to think straight (literally) with Zayn standing there looking like he does, pants hung low on his hips and hair mussed to match his dewy chocolate eyes.

“You’re from Ireland and ya’on’t find red’eads ‘tractive?” Zayn asks as if he is truly surprised and Niall is just glad that Zayn is so easily persuaded when he’s drank more alcohol then any sane person should. He wonders if Zayn even remembers half the girls he hooks up with, almost piss drunk after every new face. 

“Well being around them 24/7…” He trails off, desperately wanting to go back to bed and stop this game of twenty questions before he has to answer to something else stupid and female-related.

Zayn looks at Niall’s slumping body, pressed against the doorframe like he can’t trust his own strength to keep him upright without falling asleep and decides he’ll bug Niall about it tomorrow.

“Maybe next time” He smiles and Niall waves a goodnight before making his way back into the warm nest of comforters and pillows he built up. He flops down on the bed and idly wonders why he chose to get up in the first place, pulling his cat into a one-sided embrace as they snuggle under the covers much to the malcontent of Fluffs.

-

Next time, is at a bar on the far side of town with low lighting and lower women that attract themselves to Zayn almost instantly- no surprise there. Niall is talking with Harry over cheap cocktails, but not exactly paying attention to their conversation as much as he probably should be.  Zayn is across the room snaking his hands around the waist of the second skinny brunette that caught his eye today.

And that’s totally okay, Niall reasons with himself for the second time today- Zayn can have sex with whoever the heck he wants. It’s okay, even if Niall feels his stomach twist just a little bit more when the girl makes herself comfortable on his lap, leaning deep into the sluttiest kiss he’s seen since the last time he’s watched porn.

He glances back at Harry when he realizes he’s been staring for longer than socially acceptable, if there even is a timeframe for how long it’s considered acceptable to stare at your best mate snogging a women. 

“We should get you one of those” Harry comments in deep thought, curls bouncing moments later when he nods his head as if it’s already been decided upon.

“But I don’t like boobs mate” Niall says confused, because it’s Harry he’s talking to and Harry should really have been informed about this by now.

“Pff, I’m not talking about a girl” He laughs, and Niall gives up a smile in return.

“Oh what are we talking about then?” Louis says, catching the last bit of Harry’s sentence as he strides over to them with three more glasses and that suggestive smile he carries around.

“Boo, we are going to get this little leprechaun a nice bloke to play with” Harry replies happily and instinctively scoots over so Louis can cuddle up on his lap.

“Brilliant idea, we can find you your very first English boy toy~!” Louis says, already excited and probably already forming a plan.

“Awe Louis, you don’t have too. I have a cat” Niall says in defense, but is quieted by sudden petite fingers at his lips and the frowning face of Louis.

“Nope, it’s done. I’ll even get you off work early so we can go check out that gay bar downtown”

“It’s called Sparkle-licious,” Harry adds and ruffles the blonde’s hair in an attempt to convince him- as if he can say no.

Niall agrees to their pleas to take him out, and Louis makes plans for next Friday with a grin hanging off his face.

“These are my only bloody shoes!” They hear Zayn groan, collectively turning their heads to find the earlier girl currently leaned over the stool, her tan face looking past green.

Niall laughs at that a lot louder than he should, receiving a glare from Zayn and what looks like an embarrassed flush from the brown-haired women, or maybe that’s a ‘I’m going to puke again’ flush? He almost feels bad for her, but then Harry mutters “Mm girl, green is not your color” in the most sassy voice that Niall never knew Harry owned and Louis and Niall die laughing- compassion tat the sight of Zayn covered in this girl’s puke far gone.

Meanwhile, the girl in front of Zayn starts to sway and Zayn can tell she is going to pass out any second. He grimaces at the state of his shoes, trying to ignore the mess as he helps her sit down and calls up a taxi all the while shooting angry looks at the gathering of his mates laughing their asses off at his both his shoe’s expense and the girl he almost got lucky with tonight.

He’s not a heartless bastard, so he actually takes time to help the poor girl into the taxi and makes sure she’s alright before stripping off his own shoes and leaning against the building for a well-needed smoke.

He just wanted a good lay tonight, something to keep his thoughts pre-occupied and his hands busy- was that too much to ask? He’s taking a particularly long drag when a familiar body comes by to slump against the brick wall with him.

“Sorry about your shoes” He says in-between a fit of giggles (although he would deny it heavily if Zayn ever described Niall’s laugh as a giggle.)

Zayn sighs into his cigarette, “I needed a new pair anyways”

“You did” Niall says in agreement and buries his head in Zayn’s shoulder as he fills the air around them with sickly smell of smoke that Niall is maybe starting to like.

-

“You smell like sex” Zayn says next Friday night, and it’s merely an observation but it comes out sounding more like an accusation. Thankfully, Niall doesn’t notice the change in his voice, simply throwing a pillow at the bleached section of Zayn’s hair at the obviously true comment.

“Yeh would know” Niall says, voice raspier than usual and hair stuck up in all odd angles; it catches Zayn off guard for a long second and he forgets what the boy even said.

“Huh?”

 “Because you have a lot of sex” Niall says nonchalantly and turns his attention to the crime-drama show that Zayn is addicted to nowadays playing itself out on their television.

“I guess I do” He says and it comes out less proud than it should and more like admitting a bad habit, which, if he would ever stop and think about it, it pretty much has became. 

Zayn is glad for Niall, finally getting laid and all, being proud is what a best mate should feel towards the other right? He wonders if she was pretty.

“I’m really starved” Niall says suddenly, getting up to heat the leftovers from the dinner Zayn ate alone tonight.

He shoves the chicken in the microwave, set for a minute and contemplates taking a shower before he eats. But who is he kidding, eating comes before anything stupid like washing some guy’s come out of his ass.

Niall walks back out into the sitting room. Tupperware and fork in hand, he stands there hesitantly for a few seconds before Zayn takes notice and beckons for him to come and sit down on the couch. Niall is uncharacteristically quiet as he shovels food into his mouth, he’s sure it’s cooked great, but all he can taste is sweat and salt still lingering around from an hour ago. He pretends it’s just the seasoning and watches the telly, thoughts preoccupied with a re-run of odd angles and the man sitting a good foot away from him.

There is a gap between them winder than the space between Eleanor’s thighs, and Niall decides to close it.  Zayn’s eyes not even moving from the screen when Niall burrows his head against his shoulder and spends a few seconds just breathing Zayn in, because Zayn smells like smoke and everything he wants but can’t have.  Zayn replies to his action by slinging his arm around Niall’s shoulder, causing his face smoosh against Zayn’s neck in a one sided hug that’s so sweet and casual it’s starting to hurt lately. But that’s nothing compared to the eyes he gets when he looks up, hazel and beautiful looking down on Niall with all this concern and Niall forgot how quiet he was until Zayn opened his goddamn gorgeous mouth to mention it.

“You’ve barely talked since you got home,” He says, his eyes still staring down on him contently “Was she really bad at sex?” He asks jokingly, but in a lighthearted sort.

“It was good, ‘m just tired” Niall replies and he’s being honest because tonight was amazing. He has a blast with Harry and Louis and it was great because for once he could go out dancing and not have to worry about a bunch of girls crawling over him. He met a raven-haired man on the dance floor and with a few drinks down and tanned hands making themselves comfortable at Niall’s hips he decided that he’ll definitely be going home with this one.

It was just a coincidence that the man who fucked him into the mattress today had tattoos littering his body and dark hair that fell on Niall’s cheek after they both passed out after an amazing orgasm.  Niall wasn’t one to stay for mornings either, so he got Louis to pick him up on his way back from the club and made it back to the flat by three in the morning.

He was really feeling great about the whole ‘having sex with a hot guy’ thing, because really, it has been far too long since he’s been banged. But that feeling vanished almost the minute he walked in and saw Zayn’s stupid face still awake and staring aimlessly at the telly like he’d been purposely waiting for him to come back home. Because Zayn doesn’t stay up past two on Fridays except for when he knows it’s a night where Niall works and comes home late, but Niall wasn’t working at the pub tonight.

So when he walked in the door he couldn’t help but remember the raven haired man with tattoos on his arms and tattoos on his chest, and Niall can’t recall his name but it didn’t matter because the only name that ran through his head the past few hours had been Zayn’s.

Problematic, is what it is. It’s a huge ass problem- because Niall thinks he might be falling for Zayn just a little more than he originally thought he would, and now Zayn is absentmindedly using his knuckles to massage circles in his shoulder. And it’s such a problem because Niall can’t stop staring at his lips and it hurts just a little more than he thought it would.

“I think I’m going t’a go to bed” Niall says and detaches himself from Zayn with a faked yawn.

He stands and stretches just a bit too much for his sleepy limbs to handle, a sudden pain shooting through his ass as he falls right on it after losing his balance.

“Mother of fucks!” He starts swearing as Zayn leans over and chuckles at Niall’s position on the carpet. But that asshole does not know how painful it is to fall on your ass after it being thoroughly fucked, and why would he even, he’s straight as fuck after all.

Zayn’s still trying to hold back his laughter as Niall gives up on trying to stand up, choosing instead to curl up in his little puddle of self pity and not force anything to strain farther as he lets his face fall against the carpet and hopefully stay there until morning.

“Are you serious?”  Zayn smiles as he sits down next to Niall’s body.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” He mumbles, words lost with his face pressed against the floor and all.

“Come on mate, your bed is comfier.” Zayn says and pats the base of Niall’s spine for added effect.

“Yours has more feathery pillows.” Niall grumbles and damnit he didn’t mean to say that.

“So it does,” Zayn replies and before Niall knows what is happening the ground is getting farther away and there are arms circling around Niall’s waist from above.

“This is not fair.” Niall whispers mainly to himself as he feels his body being set on a bed that is most definitely not his own.

“Life’s not fair”

“Your face isn’t fair”

“Go to sleep Niall”

“Why”

“Why not?”

“I’m not tired”

“You collapsed on the floor”

“My ass hurt”

“Well right now you’re making my head hurt”

“Good”

“Your mom was good last night”

“You mean tonight?”

“Shut up Zayn”

“I bet you’re grumpy because she was ugly”

“Your mom?”

“No, the girl you fucked”

“Looked kinda like you actually”

“Harsh”

“It sure was”

“Goodnight Niall”

“Night Zee”

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took me a little bit longer than usual to write, but alas, more drama. Enjoyxx

"Looks painful" Niall says, lounging in the tattooing chair and aimlessly flipping through a ridiculously uneventful sports illustrated magazine.

There is a girl seated in the chair next to his, about twenty he would guess, squirming and failing at her tries to fight back against the tears already gathering at the corners of her mascara-coated eyes. "Fuck, but is it supposed to feel like your skin is being ripped off?" At that, her hands latch onto the red leather and she lets out a rather unsatisfied groan.

"It's okay love, I'm just finishing the detail work now" Zayn says in that smooth voice Niall notices he only uses when speaking with attractive women and or drug dealers. Zayn has his hand splayed at her hip as he tattoos perfect cursive lettering onto the area just below her breast and far too left to be her ribcage.

 

"Fine" she grumbles, cramped from being in a chair for two hours with some guy awkwardly re-positioning her boob every ten minutes and anxious to see her new tattoo.

Niall sets the magazine back on whatever person’s desk he swiped it off and leans himself backwards, trying to test whether you can flip these chairs backwards or not.

You can’t.

With Niall’s morning classes canceled for today, he decided to tag along to Zayn’s work. He sure wasn't going to stay at home all day and do nothing but eat ramen and possibility consider buying a premium membership on that one really hot, but also really expensive webcam site.

But Zayn’s work is actually a lot less eventful than he thought it would be so now, as he’s sitting here being bored and slightly horny, he thinks maybe he should’ve stayed home. It’s not like he has such generous amounts of alone time just hanging around anymore, in between university work and regular work, frequent trips to that gay bar with Louis, drinking, partying with Josh and most of all doing completely platonic things with Zayn that take up every free minute he has- he actually has almost no alone time.

Well it’s not like he can just leave to go look up gay porn now, he said his classes were cancelled till two and it was barley ten.

"Hey Zayn, you up for drinks tonight?" He says to break that calm silence Zayn liked to fall into, whether it be because he was tattooing and needed concentration or he just forgets that it’s considered rude to ignore people’s questions.

Routinely, Zayn takes almost two minutes to think and Niall is going to keep on repeating the question until he says something.

"Not really, waking up hung-over this morning with no aspirin? It kinda put me out." he says, and suggests that they *gasp* just stay at home and chill instead.

"But I really wanna go dancing" He whines, even pouting his lips like Harry does when he wants something from Louis. Too bad Zayn is too busy staring at the girl's breasts to see Niall's perfected puppy face. Okay he's staring at the space underneath her boobs, but still it’s slightly upsetting.

"Come on Nialler, I’ll cook dinner and we can finally drink that fancy wine Nick gave me." Zayn says, not even looking up.

Niall has a very sudden urge to club Zayn over the head with his soda can. Maybe if he did that Zayn would ruin this girl’s tattoo, get fired, move back onto the streets to transport drugs around and stop fucking with Niall’s heart strings or whatever. Dinner and wine? Thanks gorgeous and completely heterosexual man, thanks so damn much.

Instead of commenting on how completely and utterly unfair his life has become, Niall just grumbles out a "Fine, but I’d rather have beer."  Zayn smirks a little to that and maybe Niall feels a bit better- or maybe that’s just his imagination shoving crap into Niall’s brain because it gave up the minute Zayn moved into his flat.

“Cool.” Zayn replies and helps the girl to her feet so she can check out her new tattoo and Niall can pretend that he isn’t checking out how fine Zayn’s ass looks in those new skinny jeans. Gosh Niall needs to stop.

-

Once the girl leaves satisfied, Zayn has thirty minutes until the next appointment, in which they spend walking a block down to some Mexican restaurant, ordering a few bags of takeout tacos and sodas.

“So I’ve been meaning to ask ya,” Niall stops to lick salsa off his fingers “Do ya ever have teh tattoo girl’s vaginas?”

“Probably at least once a week” Zayn smiles dirtily and Niall punches him in the shoulder.

“What ’bout dicks?” Niall asks.

“Yeah I do those too.” Zayn says in between shoving a third taco in his mouth and still maintaining that stupid smirk.

“No way yeh can get your dick tattooed.” Niall looks at him with a mixture of shock and curiosity.

“Oh it’s very much possible- I have mine done.” Zayn says and Niall almost dies chocking on his taco.

After a few meters Zayn notices Niall isn’t at his side anymore and still hasn’t stopped making those gagging noises. “Are you quite alright?” He says taking in the sight of Niall all red faced from trying to dislodge the chunks of corn-flour shell lodged in his throat.

“I’m good, ’m good” Niall says and leans out of his hunched position on the pavement. “Just damn Zayn, did it hurt much?” he says between the darker brunette helping him to his feet and trying not to imagine anything that could possibly (probably, most definitely) leave him with an unwelcomed boner.

“Fuck yeah it hurt. Looks great though” Zayn laughs and Niall is definitely imagining something right now.

“I bet it does. Did. Shit.” Niall kinda hates two part answers.

Zayn laughs at Niall’s shocked face the whole way back, taking all of his provocative questions in stride since Niall looks genuinely interested in the process of tattooing one’s penis. Not to mention how it’s making the blond do this cute giggle thing, especially when Zayn explains how you need to make sure they stay hard for the entire process, and that can sometimes be a real challenge.  Niall begs to differ- because please, who wouldn’t be able to hold an erection when you have Zayn’s face two inches from your dick?

They eat the rest of their Mexican food back at the shop, where Niall and Zayn are still talking about dick tattoos when his (surprisingly friendly) co-workers join the conversation and it turns out two other guys in the shop have theirs done; and you learn something new every day he guesses.

By the end of the next shift, Niall decides he would probably do some horribly illegal things for a chance to see Zayn’s tattooed dick; he doesn’t mention that out loud of course.

-

When Niall comes back from working at the pub at midnight, he’s starving and has a frown plastered over his otherwise just plain tired face. He accidently poured a glass of beer too quickly and ended up splashing the brown liquid all over a man’s white dress pants. Said man ranted about how inconsiderate Niall was for almost ten minutes, only calming down when Louis came out to see what the commotion was. He honestly thinks the only reason Louis keeps him around is that he’s known him forever, because really, he’s clumsy and awkward handed as hell and honestly can’t do anything but nod and apologize when people start yelling at him.

He’s still feeling bad about the whole thing as he shrugs off his coat and kicks off the mud-caked shoes off from around his ankles. Then he catches onto the scent of heavy Italian seasoning idling in the air, remembering how Zayn said he’d cook dinner and they’d drink wine tonight. He can’t help but quirk his lips upward as he goes to hunt down the savor of his bad mood and give him a thank you hug.

When Niall strides into their small kitchen, Zayn has the radio up and tuned to some pop station that he’s shamelessly singing along to, (Niall prides himself with knowing it was him who got the other man addicted to Adele’s amazing voice.)

 So Zayn doesn’t even hear the blonde’s footsteps, much less notice he’s there, until the feeling of arms wrapping around his shoulder’s and neck promptly scares the shit out of him.

“S’up Zeee” Niall hums, breaking the hug early when Zayn shoves him back a little.

“Nialler, you made me drop the spatula!” Zayn whines, looking at the red sauce spotting the floor and his socked feet with a slight frown. But he’s not frowning for long because when his eyes trail up he sees Niall has a spaghetti sauce smear on his cheek and speckles of red are coating both of their shirts.

 “Looks like we got attacked by the Italian mafia” Niall giggles and It’s honestly so adorable that if Niall were a girl he would be licking that sauce off his face by now. In fact, if Niall were a boy he would be licking that sauce off his face by now too. Wait, never mind- he didn’t just think that. Nope, nope, nope, he will not be putting his lips that close to Niall’s tonight.

But the Irishman _is_ standing really close, and Zayn doesn’t know why it seems like the most natural thing ever to just lean over a little and kiss away the smeared mark on Niall’s cheek.

So he does. And when he pulls his face back, Niall has the cheekiest grin across his lips and sparkling eyes that will probably cause Zayn to rethink his whole sexuality later tonight when he looks back on his life and tries to remember when he started liking boys, much less Niall, like this.

But for now Zayn puts his thoughts on halt, because he has pasta to cook and Niall just turned the station to Justin Bieber, belting out lyrics about falling in love and Zayn couldn’t agree more.

-

As for Niall, It takes him a few nights later, almost half a year since he’s met Zayn, to finally agree that this huge-ass crush he’s been carrying around is kind of a really big problem in his life and maybe shouldn’t even be classified as a crush anymore.

“The thing is,” he starts, chugging warm soda and grabbing a handful of Josh’s crisps before starting up again. “I can’t even fuck other guys without thinking about him anymore.”

Josh rolls his eyes because he’s been hearing all about how deeply in love Niall is in with Zayn for almost six months now. Usually he listens anyways because he equally knows that Niall doesn’t have anyone else to talk to, although lately he’s feeling a lot bitchier towards the whole situation.

“You could try fucking a girl? I don’t think you’ll be thinking about Malik when you have a face full of tits.” Josh says, and it’s not like he cares if Niall is gay or not, he just cares that Niall happens to be very gay for a man who he very much dislikes.

“I don’t wanna fuck a girl” Niall groans, planting his face against Josh’s couch in frustration. “I just wanna fuck Zayn.” His voice comes out muffled and sad against the faux leather.

“Too bad Zayn would never wanna fuck you.” Josh says a bit harsher than he intended, but it’s true, and Niall should really have learnt this by now.

Niall doesn’t say anything and Josh lets out an overly dramatic sigh as he watches the boy’s chest heave up and down in the same face-against-sofa position for a few long minutes. The silence is exasperating him immensely, and it’s so unlike Niall to be quiet for so long that Josh thinks maybe the boy fell asleep. 

If only that was his luck. Niall brings his head up agonizingly slow; his brown-tinted hair a mess around his cheekbones and his eyes cast down in a glare that looked less angry than it did miserable.

“I’m sorry Niall, I just think that you should try pining after somebody new- preferably somebody with a lot less homicidal tendencies and a more loving personality. Malik is a douche that definitely doesn’t deserve anyone like you.” Josh tries, although it’s not his fault if he can’t help but mention how much of an asshole he truly thinks the dark haired man to be.

“Sometimes I wonder if you’d like ‘im more if yeh met over drink or two…” Niall says and Josh’s face immediately darkens. Whoops.

“I already fucking met him Niall.  He had a knife in his hands and a smirk on his face; I met him and what a good idea that was seeing as though he nearly killed my brother for no good reason! Can you even imagine Niall, I was only fucking thirteen- and here comes the all mighty Zayn Malik- same age, but surprise, he can shove knives through people’s chests like it’s no fucking big deal! That bastard is a born psychopath.” He says with venom and certainty rolled into one harsh-sounding rant.

Niall stays quiet because he hears this story every time he comes to Josh for advice; it’s rather expected actually. He really doesn’t mean to whine about his love life (or lack of) to his uni-bff, it just ends up happening because Niall refuses to go running to Louis for any of his damn-my-flat mate-is- really-fucking-attractive problems.

 Maybe he just needs to keep allowing Josh yell into his ear that ‘letting Zayn move in was the stupidest choice you’ve ever made’ and ‘Zayn is such an asshole/douche/psycho.’ Until one day, Niall will finally come to a huge realization that this stupid crush just isn’t worth it and he’ll have to dig himself out of this huge mess. But maybe what Josh can’t understand is that Niall doesn’t really want to dig himself out of the stupid quiffed hair and tattooed hole he’s dug somewhere inside that clichéd chunk of love and lust that everyone’s heart holds. 

Niall kicks away the empty can Josh is holding and hands him another Pepsi. “Sorry mate” He apologizes and decides it seems like the right thing to be saying.

They stay up late playing beating up zombies and Niall falls asleep on Josh’s couch around three am, after figuring it’s definitely not a good idea to walk home and it’s definitely not worth the energy of asking Josh for a ride back.

So he wakes up sore with his clothes plastered to his body in cold sweat and Josh’s loud snoring in his ear. “What time s’it?” He nudges Josh’s shoulder until he opens his eyes.

“I don know, check your phone or sumtin” Josh mutters, stretching his arms out wide and almost smacking Niall in the face with the process.

Niall gropes around blindly until he feels the familiar rectangular shaped object in his jean’s pocket, seeing that they have an hour till their next class and Niall has a text from the one and only-Zayn Malik.

By now Josh is more or less up, peering over Niall’s shoulder with squinty eyes as he reads the glowing screen of Zayn’s text.

_going to b out with ed tonight, Chinese in the fridge mkay ;p_

It was sent about two hours ago and Niall can’t help but feel this slight disappointment that Zayn being out tonight will make it a steady three days that Niall doesn’t get to see his face.

 “Too bad he never asks if you wanna come with” Josh sneers, and it’s far too early for this.

Niall doesn’t bother with a defensive reply because arguing on Zayn’s side is a useless argument to Josh anyways. “Where’s yer food at Joshie?” he says instead, pocketing his phone and aimlessly wondering into the Josh’s wonderfully stocked kitchen, well at least wonderfully stocked for a uni-student.

Josh sighs in frustration of Niall’s obliviousness to the fact that Zayn is _like totally fucking using him for free rent_ , but even with all this frustrated sighing he’s doing he still manages to cook a shit load of pancakes before their lecture starts.

-

The next time Niall sees Zayn it’s almost two days after he’s spent the night at Josh’s and it hasn’t been that long even; Niall just really has been missing his flat mate lately.

Zayn is sprawled out on the couch, eyelids all droopy and hair equally drooped from spending long hours restlessly defying gravity with its sexiness and massive amounts of hair gel alone.

Niall throws the hoodie he accidently spilt a can of beer all over in the washer and puts off actually facing Zayn for as long as he can without it seeming weird. Not that Niall thinks this is weird. Living with an attractive straight man whom thinks you share a common interest in the vagina, (when in reality you are as straight as Harry’s hair) and having regular cuddling sessions with said man, whom you might just have this maybe-more-than-a-crush on isn’t both strange and heartbreaking in the slightest.

Okay so maybe it is, especially since he might have realized this ‘you’re a hot bloke’ thing is more of a ‘you’re really attractive and nice and we get along so well and I like the way you try to act all tough but really you’re such a misunderstood sweetheart and wow that’s so cute how you cook for me every night and damn, you have really soft arms that coincidentally feel really nice when they’re around me- and actually, I just feel so nice and safe around you and even just your presence feels so good and I’m always getting all these damn feeling boners around you because you make me smile and laugh and I like it when I make you smile because when you’re happy my whole existence feels as though it’s being flooded with rainbows and your stupidly handsome face.’  

He wouldn’t be surprised if the outline of his feet were imprinted on the tile of the laundry room by the end of the night. Niall isn’t nervous, _he doesn’t do nervousness._

Yet here he is, pacing around this five foot room like a caged lion and shoving fingers through his hair as though these chunks of blonde and brown could possibly calm him faster than the rate his thoughts are harassing him at.

He sits down angrily (if one can even manage that) on the heap of ZaynandNiall clothes and decides maybe he’ll be upfront about it and just tell Zayn that he’s ridiculously in love with him. There he said it; or at least gathered enough courage to think it.

 In fact Niall is so fucking in love with Zayn Malik, it’s starting to hurt more than stitches, and bruises ever could manage.

And he’s had a lot of those since meeting Zayn, and he may still have a pink scar on his chest and a slightly awkward limp to his left, but for the most part, every damn injury he’s gotten has disappeared completely. Something his infatuation on Zayn still hasn’t managed to do, and he thinks that’s enough of a motivation to tell the other man. He’s not one for slow-burn anything, heartbreak most definitely included.

He stands up with this newly found confidence, determination all bubbly under his skin and shining in blue eyes as he makes his way out of the claustrophobic room and straight into something far too oxygen inhaling to be a solid wood door.

“CUNTS!” He shrieks at Zayn’s unexpected presence; that bastard.

Zayn looks equally confused and humored at Niall’s sudden cringe and slightly horror-stricken face. The blonde stumbles back a few feet and Zayn offers an arm to steady him from being engulfed by the mass collection of clothes tugging at his feet.

“You alright Ni?” He asks and Niall looks as though he’s contemplating whether to run or not for almost a solid minute of silence.

Niall shrugs off Zayn’s hand. “um…freaked me out tat’sall”  He pushes past Zayn on his way out, then feels bad, turning around and adding “But it’s good teh see you finally! Been far too long yeah?”

“Yeah definitely, missed my lil’ leprechaun” Zayn smiles and dismisses Niall’s outlandish behavior to his personality being naturally quirky and strange, in the best of ways of course.

“Missed you too mate” Niall says, a twinge of sadness because he knows he won’t have the courage for any sort of stupid love confession tonight.

Zayn pops a bag of popcorn and joins Niall on the couch to watch a re-run of NCIS, and if the Irishman is just a bit stiffer and less physically invested in curling up on Zayn’s lap, he doesn’t say anything.

-

In the next week they don’t exactly drift apart; it’s more like Niall happens to be busy (certainly not because he’s been bending over for guys in alleys Monday thru Friday) and Zayn just doesn’t want to confront him on why they aren’t going out for drinks every other night like they used to. If Niall is getting sick of him, that’s fine, he knew it would happen eventually. So Zayn drinks alone (and certainly doesn’t spend Monday thru Friday finding girls that want to fuck.)

He’s at some low-class bar, miles past walking distance, where the girls are rude and the men are more likely than not shuffling money into their pocket with every given opportunity; but that’s how Zayn has been preferring his nights out lately so it’s all good.

He’s not in the best of moods either, his body worn to high hell from spending too many hours with bottles and nameless faces, caffeine shots that have been keeping him wired since Monday and caused him to show up at work groggy and hangover almost every morning this week. It’s almost so bad that he’s starting to figure it’s far too heavy of a hassle to chat up a girl for the night. Maybe it’s because he’s about to fall over from exhaustion, or maybe it’s that his standards have suddenly risen, but Zayn really doesn’t feel like fucking ‘some girl’ tonight.

Truthfully and absolutely, he wants to go home. Home of course being an empty flat and a bottle of vodka he stuck in the freezer, albeit, it’s better than being an anti-social loner chugging down beers in the corner.  Too bad his ride home (Liam) is actually drinking and having a good time with a group of people seated not even ten feet away from the sad pile that is Zayn; damn Liam and his personable attitude. His head rushes when he stands, eyes going blurry for a few seconds as he grips the side of the bar and waves Liam’s concerned glance off. “Gonna go smoke a few” he mutters and half-heartedly pats his mate on the shoulder before he steps out.

Deciding to go out for a smoke may have seemed like the best idea he had that night. But it isn’t until he steps outside and flicks his lighter on, that he realizes maybe it wasn’t. He sees movement out of the corner of his eyes, and let’s face it, nothing good comes out of an abandoned parking lot at one am.

“Malik.” So much force is put into that single word, and Zayn would call that itself talent if his head wasn’t suddenly flush against a brick wall- successfully decreasing any chance of complimenting the man with that damn forceful voice.

Since a month ago his reflexes have decided to take it upon themselves and turn into something like shit pudding, (if that’s a thing now) and his body is just so damn worn out and plain _tired_ that he can’t even think how he’s supposed to disable the man attacking him. “Nice weather tonight, yeah?” He tries weakly. Maybe after he inhales some tobacco he’ll be able to fix this whole his-head-bleeding-into-the-wall situation.

“Tsk. You’re such a smartass” The man says somewhere on the spectrum between anger and disappointment. Zayn thinks it’s stupid how his hands are still free so he takes the chance to spit a half-finished cigarette in his attacker’s face.

It misses by a few inches, but at least the action itself caused the man to flinch backwards, letting out a manly yelp and and lessening the grip on Zayn’s hair by quite a bit. “Fucking bitch! What’dya do that for?”

“I’m sorry but you don’t just slam people’s heads into bricks and verbally assault them” Zayn says, eyebrows bent in a angered frown and hair mussed only slightly beyond repair.

“Bastard, like you have any right to talk!” The man says, voice rising and face growing closer to Zayn’s as he casually backs up against the wall again. They were roughly the same height, probably the same age too, the only difference being once possessed a very sharp a lethal weapon while the other didn’t. Zayn was just so fucking lucky today.

“Do you even fucking recognize me?” He screeches, but Zayn can only focus on the blade clasped between the man’s hands and the alcohol-stained breath almost touching his neck as the man closes the small gap.

“No.” Zayn says, voice steady and arms ready to knock that six inch monster of stainless steel and black handle if it tries pressing any closer.

 “Really? No fucking clue Malik!?” He says, stumbling through the words and it’s not Zayn’s fault he sucks at remembering faces. “Why don’t you ask Niall who the fuck I am! He’ll be sure to tell you in between filing for sexual assault and complaining about how you’re such a faggot!”

“What in the bloody hell are you talking about?” Zayn says, confused and slightly angry now.

 “You fucker! My name is Josh, you wouldn’t remember of course, but you were my best fucking mate until you almost killed my brother! And now you’re practically torturing one of my best mates, god-damnit Zayn you asrehole, I just want you to leave Niall alone!”

Zayn wants to push him back a few feet, preferably with his own knife, but he’s staring into these squinty brown eyes that are starting to look familiar, and shit, it really is the kid he used to hang out with in secondary school.  “Damnit Josh, calm down!”

But Josh isn’t calming down, he’s fuming and drunk and Zayn is just standing backed up against a wall confused. “Tell me what you’re talking about” Zayn says this time, slow and calm even though he felt sick.

“You don’t know? Niall is fucking sick of you man, you disgust him and come onto him every second of the day and I’m left trying to comfort him because he doesn’t have the heart to kick a stupid douche like you out of his flat!” Josh says angrily. He reminds himself that this is all for Niall’s benefit, Zayn is a jerk and he knows if he doesn’t put an end to this now it will end in a heart-broken Niall much later. That’s something he just can’t deal with.

“I don’t come onto him…” Zayn says, his voice coming out uncharacteristically unsure.

 He’s trying to not listen to Josh, or put any meaning in the words he’s still spitting out, but they’re digging into him sentence by sentence. He’s too sober for this, too tired and his brain won’t stop screaming. 

“- he doesn’t want to be groped by a faggot anymore!” Josh finishes, but Zayn is pushing him away by the shoulders and telling him to shut up. Josh doesn’t know Niall.

“You fucker, don’t just walk away- tell me you are going to leave him alone for good, god damnit!”

Zayn turns and looks back at Josh. “I’ll move out when he tells me all this himself.”

And Zayn’s so stupid, he forgot about the knife that Josh was clutching. That Josh was promptly ripping Zayn’s skin open with.

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey babes, sorry I haven’t updated in a few weeks- my life has been filled with all this insane high school drama (I never asked to be involved with other people’s lives, seriously I’m just happy being an introverted fangirl- so why can’t I just write gay fanfiction and cry over One Direction instead of douche bags?) But that’s enough about my personal life ahaa. Anyways, I have about 2-3 more chapters planned out, so suffer through with me a bit more, yeah? And thanks for the feedback, it seriously means the world to me that people are reading this. 
> 
> Enjoy Zayn being cute and metaphorical.

“Yeh cunt,”

-Is the first thing Zayn wakes too, groggy eyed and more or less unconscious than he would like to be. The lights in this place are blinding and Zayn can’t feel anything throughout the stretch his chest.  That’s worrying.

Oh god though, what if they had to amputate his whole chest off… Zayn freezes with terror, only to realize a moment later that you cannot just cut the middle section off of someone’s body. Although the thought is funny; they would’ve had to stitch his ass to his neck and he doesn’t think _that_ would look very attractive on him, much less anyone else.

Well maybe Niall could pull it off, Zayn thinks and lets out a giggle. Speaking of his roomie, Niall’s face right now bears a striking resemblance to Liam’s after him and Danielle have a fight, all sad eyebrows and red eyes.  …Wait that’s not a good thing to look like. Now Zayn is harboring sad eyebrows of his own, mimicking Niall’s until the blonde starts talking and can’t manage to hold a frown with an open mouth. “I can’t believe you went and got yourself stabbed, really Zayn, it was like two fucking inches away from-”

“Bloop” Zayn cuts in quickly. He pokes at Niall’s nose- it looks like a cute little peach colored button, how could he possibly resist not blooping it?

Zayn keeps up with constant poking at the blonde’s facial regions until Niall finally breaks, curving his lips into a smile and letting out a laugh. “You’re so high Zaynie” He says.

And Zayn thinks it kinda resembles everything that is piercing blue butterflies on summer nights and the especially spicy, sugar-coated gummy bears that Zayn always likes to but the heads off of when he can’t get his hands on enough of the happy-time-tobacco that Niall’s face could also maybe resemble, if Zayn squints his eyes and cups his cheeks.

“Gosh I wish I had all this on video,” Niall gasps and swallows the winter wind in between his chuckles and maybe Zayn has been thinking all these rainbow, chocolate pop tart flavored kool-aid thoughts aloud?

A nurse comes in and touches his head for a bit, and then his shoulder a bit, and he still can’t feel anything so that’s good as chocolate ice cream for now. Some more time passes, and Zayn has no clue how many seconds or grams, but he’s still making care to shovel his thoughts into colorful little packages of words for Niall to notice even with the brown-haired nurse feeling his chest up. And he won’t stop talking unless the blonde starts, so that’s what happens after Zayn just finished explaining why all of his friends need to go out and get an ass-tat from him.

Niall laughs, and regrets that he’s about to turn the conversation serious- but he just really needs to tell this to Zayn while he has the courage. And it’s just pretty damn convenient that right now it feels like he could tell the man he just murdered someone and needs help with the body, and probably wouldn’t even receive a funny look.  

“So I was really fucking worried about you Zee,” Niall starts, and presses his forehead against the darker shaded one because if anything, he wants this to be as dramatic as fuck. Even if the doctor said that Zayn won’t remember anything.

“And I freaked out when Liam called to say you were in t’e hospital because they didn’t know if yeh had a punctured lung or not and if you had had one you probably would’ve died ‘cause your lungs are shit from smoking so many goddamn fags yanno..and so that really scared t’e shit outta me and I just really wanted to see you as soon as I could to tell you that I’m so in-fucking love with ya t’snot even funny anymore.”

“So there, I said it! Zayn I love you.” Niall says again, liking the way it slides off his tongue.

 “Love ya too mate” Zayn grins.

 And Niall will take what he can get, even if it is in the most painfully platonic sentence he’s ever heard.  “Cool” he smiles a bit sadly and Zayn accidently switches the topic away from love confessions a few seconds later.

Niall decides to give up on life the moment he kicks the hospital chair back to the corner of the bright little room, curling up at Zayn’s side instead. Carefully as, he really doesn’t want to accidently bump any IVs out or accidently send the man he just confessed his deep rooted love to into cardiac arrest.

Zayn’s mouth forms an intrigued little ‘o’ shape when Niall presses his arms against his non-bandaged side. And It’s not long before Zayn’s surprised expression turns into more obscenely-cute giggling when Niall splays his hand across Zayn’s (surprisingly pale) cheek and realizes how much he’s missed the English boy in the past few weeks. There’s been a wall separating them and it’s probably, mostly, all Niall’s fault. Especially the part where he purposely has been ditching him for the past week because it’s just too damn hard to go out and watch the man he’s (in fucking) love with grind his gorgeous body all over a bunch of random chicks. Or worse, drink himself to the point where he forgets Niall is a guy and his best mate and feels the need to flirt with him, completely unknowing of how much that fucking hurts when the other person knows you’ll never mean it.

Niall stares into Zayn’s eyes (damn are they amazing Zayn should take up eye-modeling) and wonders if Zayn was arguing over the next Kim Kardashian shaped girl he was going to fuck when whoever the hell was actually stupid enough to argue with him shoved a six inch blade through his shoulder.

They spend a good ten minutes drawing loops on each other’s arms with the tips of their fingers as Zayn babbles on about his general life and rainbows. Niall just listens, busying himself with threading fingers through the (surprisingly soft) bleached patch in Zayn’s hair and finding both differences and similarities he liked in drunken Zayn vs. medically high Zayn.

Sadly, the medicine high is short-lived and starts wearing down somewhere through the fifth verse of Bohemian Rhapsody and the second rant concerning The Wanted’s fan base. Zayn’s words slowly become less lyrical and more logical and it’s a silent tragedy.

He literally watches the blanket of calm and cool that Zayn wears around himself stitching itself back together, and Niall kinda wants to rip it off. Because this invisible cloak of distance means things will go back to where they left off- and that’s a sort of tragedy in on its own.

 -

Just as Niall knew would happen, just as the doctor has said he was ninety-nine percent sure of happening, Zayn forgets the whole thing and when questioned, really has no clue of what he or Niall was talking about in the hospital room.

But that’s okay, Niall is just happy he finally got everything he wanted to say out and about in Zayn’s face while he had the chance.

What’s not okay, is the days following the hospital visit. Zayn is being stupidly acidic lately, jumping on anyone for the littlest of things (everyone being Niall, since Zayn can’t go to clubs and fuck girls with stitches in his shoulder.) He thinks maybe that’s what Zayn’s so pissed about, the whole not having sex until his shoulder and upper chest isn’t at risk for splitting back open thing. Or maybe he’s just pissed at the fact his shoulder was cut open by some ‘random-arsehole with issues.’

Niall watches Zayn chug down a full glass of water and a handful of the pills the doctor gave him to keep the pain at bay. He wipes his mouth on his sleeve and Niall notices how he’s pretty much given up on shaving, black fuzz crawling up to the tips of his cheekbones around his lips. It reminds him of the beginning days, as he liked to call them, when the dark brunette was quiet spoken and awkward around the flat as Niall tried to get him to lose the I’m-a-walking-skeleton look and shave his facial hair a little because he looked like a forty year old man.  At the time, Niall didn’t like to think about how he was falling in love with an anorexic old man. He probably wouldn’t mind now, because he knows Zayn is Zayn in the inside no matter how fucked-up he looks on the outside.

So Zayn’s standing at the counter grimacing as he swallows almost half a bottle, and all Niall really wants in life is to give him a hug and get him to cuddle on the couch with a Finding Nemo dvd and that tub of cookies and cream ice cream sitting in the freezer.

He’s about to too, shoving his phone in his pocket and wondering when the last time he was afraid to talk to Zayn was.

“Watch a movie with meh?” Niall says, and he chickens out from hugging him.

Zayn sighs, (something he’s been doing a lot of lately) and Niall waits a whole minute and a half for an answer until his phone rings and breaks their little party of silence. He looks back up at Zayn, leaning side-by side with him against the cabinets and still contemplating Niall’s question like it’s outcome could be life or death.  Maybe it was.

Niall eventually breaks eye contact and digs the phone out of his pocket, glancing at the illumined screen before answering with an “S’up Josh?”

Zayn leaves shortly after.

-

 “You took my fucking jeans?” Zayn shouts one day, swinging the door to Niall’s room open, not caring that it probably indented the nice dry wall behind it. He storms in without any chance for argument on the blond’s side and clenches his fists.

“Um, yeah. I’m sorry?” Niall says, sprawled across his bed idly strumming a guitar while Zayn stands above him looking menacing and ready to explode in a fit of insults and violence. As if he thinks that will affect the other at all (Niall, who knows pretty damn well that Zayn wouldn’t ever lay a hand on him- no matter how deep his eyebrows are downwards bent.)

The Irish lad sits up, confused, and repositions his snapback as it slips down on his face and momentarily breaks the stare-off he and Zayn are holding.  Niall keeps his eyebrows raised and face emotionless, while on the other hand, Zayn just gets more irritated by every drowned-out second.

“What’s wrong?” Niall asks with heavy words and a tone that is just plain tired of Zayn’s shit. He scoots over so he’s not taking up the whole double bed with his long limbs clad with Zayn’s skinny jeans. He pats his hand on the bed sheet and offers the man to sit down and maybe, possibly, cool the fuck down before he opens his mouth and starts screaming.

Zayn actually does sits down on the edge, which considering recent behavior, Niall thought would be a long shot to achieve. He watches as the brunette falls back on mattress to fast, sending little jolts of pain right through the shoulder he freshly got out of the hospital room for a few days ago.  He still doesn’t open his mouth though, biting his lip hard to keep his damn eyes from watering right in front of Niall.

The blonde doesn’t say anything either, just gently shoves a pillow under Zayn’s arm and scoots as close as he can without Zayn tensing up.

Zayn turns towards him after a bit. “My wallet was in the back pocket, I kinda needed it today.” He says, defeated but calm.

“I should’ve checked the pockets before I put ‘em on, sorry.”

“T’s fine” Zayn breathes. He takes the wallet from Niall’s out-reached hands and lets his fingers linger there for a moment. 

Niall moves his arm to the back of Zayn’s and they lock eyes for what seems like eternity. Or, until Niall sneezes and breaks the trance-like thing they had going on. Zayn gives Niall the saddest hair-ruffle he’s ever experienced and walks out without, surprise, another word.

Later that night Zayn shoves a frozen pizza in the oven, and Niall forgets to make the sausage joke that Zayn always used to laugh at.  And they end up eating exactly three feet and six inches away from each other on the couch (Niall measured it after Zayn fell asleep) in complete silence save for the television playing re-runs of House in the background.

Three feet and six inches turns into four by Wednesday, five by Thursday and by Friday Zayn moves to the chair that they never really used before, only buying it because it was fifteen dollars more and Liam said it matched the couch amazingly.  

Niall isn’t stupid, he knows quite well when someone is ignoring you opposed to you just thinking someone doesn’t genuinely want to be around you.  He’s staring at Zayn’s perfectly shaped collar bones, exactly eight feet away on some uncomfy chair that doesn’t even recline, thinking about all the things he’s could’ve fucked up on to make Zayn want to forget that they were once friends much less mates who occasionally shared over-whelming amount of affection with one another.

Then it hits Niall- the thing he royally fucked up on was just that, Niall’s stupid obsession to be as close as possible to him whenever he could. He was suffocating Zayn with his stupid homosexual love and maybe all the man ever wanted out of this was a place to stay. Yet he got a clingy best mate who had probably been annoying the shit out of him for so long that he was finally just ready to break. Niall suddenly felt just like that one friend who always invited himself places and cut into conversations. That realization hurt him a little because he had almost thought Zayn would have the guts to tell that to his face.

“Why don’t you just move out?” Niall mumbles sadly, but the quietness of the room sucks up his question all too quickly and Zayn’s light snoring is enough of an answer for him anyways.

He closes his textbook and drapes a quilt over Zayn’s frame, intent on getting some sleep but not before backtracking a few to brush his lips over Zayn’s forehead in a goodnight that he can’t say aloud anymore. He pulls his lips back after a long few seconds, staring at Zayn’s face before deciding he feels too much like Edward Cullen and should probably just go the fuck to bed. If not,  he’ll probably spend the next two hours watching the rise and fall of Zayn’s chest under the weight of that blue-checked blanket they bought during one of their semi-annual thrift shopping adventures with Harry and just feel worse because these types of thoughts are the ones that got Zayn to hate him.

He lies in his bed and cries into the pillow when his cat won’t even snuggle by his side anymore.

-

Louis catches fast onto his bad mood the next day at work, but what can he say, Louis catches onto everything.

It’s an exceptionally slow day for them, people trickling in and out for coffee, sandwiches and whatever Louis decides to sell when it’s too early for alcohol. Harry stops by around two to do no more than greet Niall with a wave, and then proceed into shoving Louis against the back room’s wall and mouth fuck him. Niall yells at them to quiet the fuck down because there is a family with three small children giving him curious looks as to what’s going on six feet around the corner to where he’s standing and he doesn’t want to explain gay sex to ten year olds, thanks.

“So you wanna talk ‘bout it?” Harry says after him and Louis are finished orgasming or whatever and want to pay attention to Niall. Niall promptly ignores him and spins around on the barstool until he feels like puking instead of answering anything the boy has to say. It’s sad that this is how he is spending his lunch break.

“Nothing t’a talk about” He finally says, dizzy. He takes a swing of whiskey to clear his mind, never mind it’s three in the afternoon and Louis wants him to work for another shift; it’s not like he’ll get drunk off a few glasses and figures it’ll be fine.

Harry nods, curls bouncing across his forehead as he steals a sip from Niall’s drink. “I just want to make sure you know I’m here for ya Nialler. We all are, and if you’re going through any rough times, just talk when you want yeah?”

Niall shuffles his head against Harry’s shoulder and the boy absentmindedly trails his fingers through Niall’s dark blonde hair in response. Niall doesn’t feel like saying anything and he’s glad at least one person is willing to accept that.

One person not being named Louis Tomlinson.

“Better yet, you could talk about it now and we could work through this together- right here, right now Nialley.” Louis chirps, and takes the seat next to Niall with a plate of sandwiches balanced on one of his tiny-ass hands and a soda in the other.

“Here, be properly nourished first.” He says and shoves a sandwich into Niall’s face.

“Uck, no” Niall refuses food for possibly the first time in his life and clutches the bottle a little closer to his heart in the most metaphorically way possible.

“Come on, eat.”

“No. I just wanna drink”

“Niall, don’t become an alcoholic on me” Harry jokes lightly and nudges the glass out of his hands. And damnit Harry for being so gentle and innocent sunshine rays that Niall can barley protest as the brunette pushes it to the far side of the counter.

Niall frowns, but takes a bite of the sandwich anyways because Louis makes the best ham and fucking cheese ever.

He ends up staying after work to finish the whiskey he started and drink a bunch more beer since he’s too broke for any pub other than Louis’ and he doesn’t want to go home and find Zayn chugging pills and frowning at the wall because his roommate is an annoying homosexual.

-

Zayn isn’t actually at home chugging pills and thinking about a boy who is slowly turning him insane.  

He’s at a club a few miles down chugging pills (definitely not the red-striped ones his doctor prescribed,) trying to get his mind to the point where he can’t remember striking blue eyes and messy blonde hair anymore.

It used to be easier, Zayn whines to himself. Just have sex with a few chicks, drink a few pints, and boom. Niall and his boyish good looks and enduring personality are gone for a few hours.

Now, it’s like no matter what he does he just can’t fucking forget that face.

He gets home early, at about one thirty since his ride home wanted to leave and his arm was killing him with all the random bodies bumping against it and his meds back on his nightstand.

“Where were you?” Niall yawns and forgets that he was trying to not be annoying.

“Out.”

“Out _where_?” And fuck it, Niall is tired and will be as annoying as he wants because Zayn can literally not be doing this one-worded answers thing to him right now.

He actually wouldn’t be surprised if Zayn ignored his question and walked away. But he doesn’t. He finishes stripping off his coat and walks right up to the couch Niall is reading on, seating himself exactly one foot and two inches away from the blond and lighting a cigarette.

“Don’t smoke in here” Niall says automatically and nudges Zayn’s shoulder for emphasis, forgetting how it was kind of really injured.

“Sorry”

“It’s happened a lot tonight, don’t worry” Zayn says and gingerly rolls up his sleeve, meaning to check that nothing was bleeding ever since that punk-ass swung his arm around his shoulder and dragged him to the back of the club to do body shots.

Niall helps him change the bandages and it’s the first time they’ve touched in awhile.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *drumroll pls*

There are so many little things that set Zayn off these days, and Niall doesn’t know what to do anymore. He tries shoving the brunette and all his insensitive outbursts into the back of his mind, going along with the silence because he knows it’s something he caused.

They still talk, some nights when Niall gets home from work Zayn’ll be home drinking on the couch and he’ll slur out a hello before turning back to whatever he was doing, leaving Niall to stand in the doorway and think of a reply that maybe Zayn won’t answer with a one-worded sentence.

Although he never actually thinks of anything good enough to say so he’ll give up with slumped shoulders and walk to bed.

-

It’s four am on a Saturday when Niall hears the door open and Zayn stumble in, drunk off his ass and as high as a kite.

Niall looks up from his cup of tea long enough to see Zayn peeling off his jacket. He takes a long look at Niall and doesn't break the eye contact as he chugs down the last of whatever substance was in his flask.

“How's it going?” Niall yawns. He slides off the stool and faces Zayn a few feet from the hallway wall.

Zayn wipes the alcohol off his lips with the back of his hand and Niall makes his own hands busy with the strings of his pajama pants. Zayn is still trying to get his balance and process Niall's question, a lot to handle at the moment.

“’Ow should I know?” He finally mumbles, leaning his head against the wall and letting Niall take the flask from his hands and chuck it in the sink. It rattles against the porcelain rim loudly and Zayn furrows his brows.

“Lemme help you to bed Zayn, you’re sloshed as fuck” Niall sighs and dumps his own tea down the drain (not like it was helping him sleep any.)

Though Zayn doesn’t make much of a move, so it's Niall who ends up stepping forward and snaking his arm around Zayn's. They make it at least to the hallway like that, and Niall is uncharacteristically quiet as Zayn is stumbling through words and sentences that Niall can’t even begin to make out.

He stops them in that small hallway separating their rooms, letting his arm fall and Zayn mumble out a “s’that for?”

“Well.” Niall starts, “I was going to tell you this yesterday,”

“but yesterday you were passed out on the bathroom floor. So ‘m telling you now.” He says.

There is a silence between them as Zayn stumbles out a “T’s something bad right?” voice quiet and dark hair plastered to his face. His eyes are occupied with the laces of his shoes and he's putting all of his weight on the wall behind him, his grip on the man in front of him loose and breaking.

“I want you to move out.” Niall replies, voice tired and face saying all sorts of sad things that shouldn't suit him too well.

Zayn finds himself grabbing Niall’s arm just a bit tighter.

“If you don’t wanna leave, fine- I will. But you’re an ass Zayn, sure a very fine ass, it’s just lately your ass has been causing me a lot of problems and I just think we shouldn’t be living together anymore, understood yeah?” He says quickly and nervously.

“Just, um, wait.” Zayn says quickly, begging his mouth to say anything, anything that might make Niall not want to leave. He opens his mouth, closes it and tries willing his mind into sobriety before he says something stupid. He's so high and drunk right now, and maybe he isn't drunk enough, or maybe he didn't snort enough white powder for his mind to momentarily die because all those feelings he's been shoving down his throat for the past few weeks are still there and they're resurfacing with full force, pulsing through Zayn's head until he feels sick.

He can't give anything more than pleading glances to Niall, hoping he'll get some sort of indication that will let him understand that Zayn can really not have him out of his life. Even if they won't ever be anything more than friends, Niall was the one who barged his way into Zayn's life, all sunshine and snapbacks that would surely lead to the destruction of Zayn if he were to lose that part of his life. Because Niall kinda had became a part of his life. Everything he did was because of that boy, every drink he swallowed among every hit he took was because of the stupid Irishman who he was dumb enough to fall for.

In fact he fell so hard it scared the shit out of him. Zayn doesn't fall for people, it's a thing he’s had about not letting his emotions control his actions that he's kept so well in line throughout every hookup, every failed relationship with every girl he's fucked. When he realized he's broken it, all those weeks ago, he freaked out and does the only thing he knew would work-

he left.

Feelings and thoughts are horrible things, things Zayn hasn’t ever know how to handle. So he tried to leave them in exchange for a bottle- and it works. He forgets the blonde boy's name and how he used to crawl up on his lap and kiss his cheek in a way that was way to chaste to be casual, he takes shots by the dozen and forgets how their laughter used to mix together and fill the small flat until they were gasping for breath and tangled up on each other. Puts his face to dirty tables with brunette girls till his nose bleeds and the dreams of a blonde straddling his hips in a dark room fade into swirling colors and obnoxious laughter.

Zayn's never fallen for a boy before Niall, it scares him.

He watches in slow motion as Niall pushes away the hand still clutched onto his shoulder and walks away. Zayn fucked up.

“Niall” He says again, slurred voice pleading to be heard in the otherwise empty hallway. Niall stops at the entrance of his room, turning around with exhaustion painting his features and bags drawn beneath his eyelids.

“I’m sorry. Um, I thought leaving you alone would help this but I guess it didn’t really make anything better, it just made me sadder and everything is a mess. I don’t know, I guess it’s just-” And Zayn can’t finish his words, can’t care to think of an ending to his mumbling because Niall is waving him off and walking father away, he’s slipping through Zayn’s fingertips and the words just won’t form past his open lips.

So he calls his name again, a mixture of frustration and disparity pooling in the base of his voice. He’s hastily catching the blond by the shoulder, words streaming out of his mouth and he’s not even sure if he’s shouting or whispering at this point. “Just give me a chance Niall, come on, please please don’t leave.”

He loses his grip, of course he does, and Niall is pushing away. But he’s not walking away, just avoiding Zayn’s gaze. He’s rubbing his hands together, blue eyes to the carpet like he doesn't know what to do- and that makes two of them.

And then Niall is the one who is grabbing for Zayn, using a callused hand to clutch and push Zayn’s hips into the wall, and shoving his shoulders with the other. Zayn looks up with confusion, and spares a second to the thought that Niall might start punching him.

He doesn't, but god it hurts anyways. Niall’s grip on his shoulder causes burning sensations to crawl through his skin, getting caught up on where the stitches rub against skin and making Zayn let out a hiss of pain.

But neither of them move, and Zayn doesn't really breathe either.

But Niall does, and sure it might be slightly dubious-consensual in his eyes- but Niall's thinking along the lines of 'fuck it' and 'let's make the next time we meet as awkward as possible because I'm deciding to do something I've been wanting for months now.'

And Zayn is sobering up pretty quickly, because Niall's face is _right there._ And before Zayn really even knows what is happening Niall's lips are _right there._

Zayn makes a muffled sort of noise that he sincerely hopes doesn't sound like a protest and kisses back against Niall's lips fast and desperate. “Wha-” he’s saying, but Niall ignores him in favor for nipping at Zayn’s perfectly maroon-shaded lips.

Niall drops his hand from Zayn’s shoulder and lays it to rest on Zayn’s hip, all the while Zayn is finally realizing what’s happening. He puts his own hands to use, gripping the sides of Niall’s face and splaying his hands against the contrast of Niall’s pale cheekbones. Niall moans into his mouth and Zayn snaps out of his trance-like state, taking control of the kiss and directing Niall closer with the pull of blonde hair. He’s forcing his tongue past reddened lips and into the warmth of Niall’s mouth, licking his way inside as Niall pants beneath him.

“Ahh-ah Zayn,” He says obscenely, thrusting his body flush against Zayn’s and wishing there wasn’t so much fabric in the way.

Niall curls his fingers in a death-like vice around Zayn’s well-defined hipbones and Zayn takes the opening to switch positions, pushing Niall willingly against the wall and raking his own hands underneath the blond’s loose shirt.

Their bodies tangle in each other and Zayn pushes one of his legs between Niall’s, moaning when the Irishman grinds back against it. They are both hard now, clothes reduced to no more than a sweaty mess of clingy fabric that separates the two.

“These,” Zayn struggles, “need to go.”

Then they’re breaking the kiss, and Zayn is pushing up Niall’s shirt and throwing it to the corner of the hallway while Niall maneuvers them into his bedroom.

The second they’re inside Zayn takes hold of the smaller man, backing him up until his knees bump the edge of the bed. Zayn shoves his shoulders down, both of them toppling onto the bed.

He spares a second to take in Niall, flushed skin and bruised lips laid out in front of him. For him.

And Niall ignores the vodka on Zayn’s lips, clutching the bed sheet tangled around them and Zayn goes down on him- it’s a wet dream come true for Niall that he’s not planning on stopping even if Zayn is half drunk and half high during it.

He’s moaning loudly, bucking his hips for friction against Zayn’s as the man licks his way down Niall’s neck, leaving sloppy purpling bruises and soft bit marks at his collar bones.

Zayn trails his tongue down Niall’s chest, stopping to swirl and flatten the tip of his tongue against Niall’s soft pink nipples, taking the noises released from Niall’s throat as a sign to continue sucking and biting at the small mounds.

Niall grips at Zayn’s messy quiff, scraping his nails down Zayn’s built shoulders and circling his tattoos with needy fingers. “Zayn!” He gasps, suddenly remembering something. “Lemme see your dick, like, now”

Zayn lifts his head up from Niall’s chest and meets Niall’s eyes with a confused eyebrow wiggle. Nevertheless, he complies with the request, sliding his body off the bed. Skilled fingers instantly reach to his belt buckle as Niall meets him at the edge of the bed, shucking off Zayn’s ridiculously tight jeans and sliding his fingers underneath the waistband of Zayn’s boxers.

No matter how much mental preparation Niall went through beforehand, he still is taken aback with a squeal as Zayn’s cock springs free.

“Ah shit Z, you weren’t lying about the tattoo thing,” Niall says amazed and curiosity finally satisfied.

Zayn kicks the boxers to the edge of the room and crawls back above Niall, smirking. “You like?”

Niall responds with a slow nod, trailing his fingers over the outline and causing Zayn to arch upwards and beg for more of Niall’s touch. Niall takes this as an invitation; pushing Zayn against the headboard and causing his back to curve and shudder against the wall. “Niall” He says with an edge of need in his voice Niall hasn’t heard since tonight.

“M right here,” Niall says. He replaces his hand with warm lips and it takes all Zayn has to not fuck his face. Instead, he spreads his legs wider and wonders where the hell an innocent thing like Niall learned to do things like this with his tongue.

Niall enjoys sucking dick much more than Zayn ever would have ever guessed. So, it takes him a long time and a lot of self-restraint to finally detach Niall’s mouth, stuttering out a “I wan’ta fuck you.”

Niall wipes Zayn’s precum off his lips with his pointer finger; proceeding to graphically lick his fingers clean without breaking eye contact with Zayn’s darkening eyes.

“Okay.” Niall grins.

-

When Niall wakes up the next morning, Zayn and most of Zayn's things are gone.

He really shouldn’t be as surprised and heartbroken as he is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [homoness](http://www.tea-and-feels.tumblr.com/)


	11. Chapter 11

“Can ya just not,” Niall mumbles in that sad, Irish voice of his for what seems like the hundredth time today. Not surprisingly, for the hundredth time since Louis and Harry barged into his flat, his request is ignored.

“But we brought take-out,” Louis says, gesturing to the food like some sort of peace offering.

“You gotta talk to us.”

Niall sulks farther into the couch. _His couch,_ now. He’s decided to be intent on ignoring the food (that is suspiciously labeled from his favorite Asian restaurant.) He loves Louis and Harry to death, but they really need to leave.

“Just tell us what happened Nialls, we haven't seen you in days.” Harry says in that soft voice he uses when he's conversing with small children and cats.

Harry even goes as far as sitting his hipster ass down on the too-small couch, trying to invade the little bubble of personal space Niall has created with his persistently long legs.

After a long-winded sigh Niall gives in and scoots over. -But only because it's Harry and Harry will get his way with that adorable puppy face one way or another.

“Just give me a few” Niall sighs. He most definitely does not give into the comforting hand Harry is rubbing against his slumped shoulders.

Louis taps his phone to check the time. “Take all the time you need Nialls,” he says and adds a- “I'll have Nick do a few extra shifts today.”

Niall lifts his head from the couch's armrest, reluctantly shoveling Asian food into his mouth. He mumbles out a soft-spoken “okay.” somewhere in between eggrolls, and goes on to take his sweet time eating the rest of their food.

If they really want him to talk about his feelings, they're going to wait until after he's dissolved most of them in MSG and sugar flavored drinks.

.

Niall turns to Louis after about three containers of Chinese and four cans of soda (that he kinda, _really_ ,wishes had been some sort of alcoholic beverage)

When it comes down to it, he realizes he doesn't know what to say. Forgetting how to phrase what happened into legible sentences, Niall spends a good amount of time opening and closing his mouth while Louis waits as patiently as a Louis can wait.

“So...I'm really sorry I skipped work the last two days. I, a few nights ago, uh, me and Zayn fucked.” Niall says eventually and hopelessly.

“Isn’t that go-” Harry starts before Louis quiets him.

“No.” Niall shakes his head, blond locks falling into his eyes. “He was high and drunk, and I fuckin’ kissed him.”

“-and I don’t know, one thing led to the next and I’m waking up alone in his bed wondering where the hell him and all his things went.”

Louis sighs loudly. “Goddammit, maybe if that bisexually constipated man spent less time in the bathroom doing his hair he'd realize how far he's shoved himself into the closet.”

“But Zayn doesn't like guys,” Niall explains. “He probably didn't even know t’was going on, yanno, got me confused with a chick.” He stammers out, clutching his fingers against his palms and willing himself to not remember that night.

“So you really think that him fucking you was a mistake?” Louis says, voice raising a few octaves. He really wishes Niall would drop that blank blue-eyed stare of his before Harry starts getting emotional too. “That he didn't know he was having gay sex when his dick was up your ass?”

“Louis this is serious” Harry sighs, watching his boyfriend get himself worked up over Niall’s personal troubles once again.

“ _Hazza_ , I'm being serious!” Louis continues. “Niall, do you think he got confused? Like, 'whoops, sorry bro! I though those ass-cheeks were just some crazy shaped labia. #No homo though!”

Niall clutches his hands tighter, knuckles going pale to the point his nails are starting to leave crescent-shaped indents across his palms.

He can literally not deal with Louis' sass right now.

The sadness and pouted face he held turns into a deeper frown as anger fills his gut. It's the first time he's felt really anything in days, and to be truthful, it feels nice. Exhilarating. He's been so fucking sad the past few days, moping around and drowning in his sadness all because of one handsome tattooed jackass.

He stares at his white-knuckled fists and snaps. “Well then why the fuck isn't he here right now, Louis?”

“I told you he’s-“

“Why are ya here Louis? I love you, but I don't need your options on this! I made a mistake alright, I crushed on my mate and it ended in tears, please, please just stop telling me it'll all work out in the end and just lemme get over him on my own.”

“Sorry. We're just worried 'bout our leprechaun.” Louis drapes his arms over Niall's shoulders in a side-slated sort of hug until Niall finds himself sandwiched between the two boyfriends.

“We've all crushed on straight guys before, it's hard Niall. But we'll be here.” Harry says.

After awhile Niall sighs, head in hands. “I know this sounds corny and stupid, but holy fuck, I don't think this was just a crush.”

“You loved him,” Harry says after awhile of silence. And his words are so knowing and sincere that it makes Niall want to rip out his hair and murder baby cats while he sobs uncontrollably. But then again, Harry's voice sometimes has that sort of effect on people.

Niall sighs, “In the beginning he was just some bad boy biker I thought was hot, but then suddenly he’s living with me and we tell each other everything, and I guess I was falling hard for those hazel eyes.” he replies quietly with hopeless confusion lacing his words.

“He was always there for me; we were there for each other. Until one day, he just changes. I don’t know what happened- he drank too much, started getting high too often. He’d come back at three a.m and smell like sex. And he was just so annoyed with me all the time…But I still loved him more than anyone ever before. I still am in love with him, and I hate it because he’s turned into this asshole that I don’t even know anymore.”

Harry nods. “I think you just gotta go talk to him. Zayn... he's complex. A complicated mess of ink and angst that doesn't know how to express the right emotions when things aren't black and white.

Niall has no intention of seeing Zayn. Hell, he doesn't even want to think about him right now. But he still manages to nod when Harry makes him promise to at least attempt to contact him like it will magically solve all of his emotional angst or something.

-

Niall spends a lot of time drinking. He spent a lot of time drinking before the whole Zayn thing, sure, but now it’s become routine of sorts.

After work beers are shared with Louis, please be happy shots at a club with Josh, sorry but Zayn doesn’t want to talk to you whiskey with an awkward Liam happens a week later when Niall simply waves a “What's up Payne?”

Cheap, It’ll be okay wine shows up uninvited with a smiling Harry- and Niall is too nice to refuse alcohol or Harry's friendly grin. They sit on Niall's couch watching football and for the first time since Zayn left his flat feels a little more lively.

He's doing okay until I’m gonna get drunk by myself and masturbate to Zayn's fucking face vodka hits him hard and before he knows what's happening he's laying on the cold hard ground. Aka, his kitchen floor.

A week later he sees a flash of Zayn's stupid-ass quiff and boom, it’s please stop crying when you drink martinis bought by a bloke with chestnut colored hair. He says his name is Charlie and Niall replies with you’re the first guy I fucked since him and it’s distressing, mid-breakdown pints of Guinness.

Every morning it's Irish coffee, shared with an empty kitchen and his cat, Fluffs, if he's lucky.

You’re really nice but I don’t want a relationship glasses of red wine with a mate from his college calculus course is sipped in some stuffy Italian restaurant, a date that Josh had practically begged him to go on. It's been a month, why aren't you over him flasks in a parking lot are chugged by his chapped lips when he walks past an all-to familiar alleyway.

There are desperate have sex with me margaritas in a club and more empty bottles of vodka he has to dodge stepping on when he finally gets the stamina to drag himself out of bed to get ready for class.

He thinks he maybe sees the appeal in what Zayn uses to deal with his feelings. If he had been considered a junkie for snorting every time something got rough, then maybe Niall is considered an alcoholic for wanting to be happy.

-

It's almost a full two months later when Niall runs into Zayn at Ed's market. And when he says he runs into Zayn, he literally means he fucking runs, face first, into Zayn's stupid leather-jacket clad back, falling face first because besides bruising, what else is Niall good at?

“Shit, you okay ma-” Zayn starts, stumbles back, and stops as the words die in his throat.

Niall, to his credit, doesn't even realize it's Zayn until after he's finished acting like an idiot trying to secure the tipping grocery basket. It's only after he's content that his instant coffee has not, in fact, spilled all over this man's shoes, he brushes off his legs, stands, and almost has a heart attack with who's face is inches away from his.

Because last time he was face to face with this man, everything turned out so bloody great, right?

The look Zayn has is priceless, all open mouth and guilty eyes. Niall would be laughing if he wasn't so busy holding back the urge to repeatedly punch the man in the face for all the emotional trauma he's caused.

Niall doest punch him in the face, after all. He stands there as solemnly as possible, arms crossed, wondering if Zayn will say something first or more likely, run to the nearest revolving doors to escape Niall's incursive glare.

“Hey.” Zayn says eventually. He mentally kicks himself, but really, what else is there to say? He doesn't trust his voice to form logical, non-trembling sentences right now.

Niall has his lips pursed, hips angled and Zayn swears to god the man must have learned that from Louis.

“Hey?” Niall repeats, blue eyes slanted (not that Zayn can really even look Niall in the eyes right now.) He settles for staring at the sports logo etched in Niall's snapback and contemplates texting Ed to pull a fire alarm or something. Anything, to get him out of this conversation.

“Well what do you want me to say Niall?” He says after awhile of intense staring.

Niall uncrosses his arms. He looks tired, so far from the bouncing energetic Irish man Zayn was used to. But things have changed between them, that, he knows far to well. He doesn't want to think about how he could be the cause.

“You want me to apologize? Because fuck, I'll apologize all day if I have to.” Zayn tries, searching Niall's face for anything other than the bags underneath his eyes.

“Can you just fucking say something Niall?” He says, desperate to hear the Irish tinted voice he's been dreaming about for months. “I know what I did was really fucking stupid, and come to think of it, oh and hell I've been thinking about it, it probably would've been best if I never even fucking moved in with you from the beginning. So, I'm sorry Niall.”

“Yeh should have never moved in with me, fucking really bitch? Cunt! If you were so damn _miserable_ living with me then why. The. Bloody. Fuck. didn't you move out sooner? Why did you practically fucking beg me to let you stay that night? Huh, Zayn?” Niall growls, getting up in Zayn's personal space in the most predatory sense.

“Well maybe I didn't know what I was saying! That night was such a fucking mistake Niall, and I swear to god if I could re-do it I would have left when you asked me to.” Zayn finally looks Niall in the eyes, sorrow and regret lacing his words. “I never would have forced you to have sex with me and I'm so fucking sorry you don't even know god dammit.”

“Forced me?” Niall is suddenly taken aback with sick laughter filling his lungs. “ _You,_ forced me to have sex with you? Is that what you really fucking think Zayn?” Niall stares at Zayn's confused face for far longer than necessary. “Newsflash, I'm gay.”

Niall even adds some flare via spirit fingers before he's turning his heels and leaving Zayn gaping in the middle of the cereal isle.

He used to dream about how Zayn would react to him coming out. It usually ranged from lusty confessions to emotional outbursts, but it was never was supposed to happen like this.

This, it was too rushed, he was too pissed off at Zayn to even care about what came out of his mouth and now he just wanted to go home and chug a few bottles of vodka. Hell, he might even get smashed enough for alcohol poisoning. Wouldn't that be fantastic.

The thing that pisses him off the most is that he was so damn close to getting over Zayn. Weeks away from some happy ending where the dark haired man was forever out of his mind, shuffled behind old doors. The only remains would have been the faintly white patches of scars on his chest from their first encounter. A pink mark along his cheekbone from the alleyway he found Zayn in and the crooked stitching said man had bullied him into getting. Which, hadn't even healed properly thank-you-very-much. So Niall had been left with a pink scar and another useless memory of Zayn.

He ditched his shopping basket at Zayn's feet when he walked away. He could honest to god go without coffee for another week if it meant never running into Zayn at the market again.

“Niall, can you just fucking hold up for a second?!” Zayn shouts just as the blond is walking out the doors.

“No. You cunt, go away.” Niall practically huffs.

“Niall. You wanted it? That night...” Zayn says breathless. He's not sure if his out of breath-ness is due to his lungs being complete shit from the immense amount of cigarettes or the erratic beat of his heart messing with his intake of air right now.

He catches up with Niall, cornering him against the bags of salt by the entrance.

“No Zayn, I just fucking sucked your stupidly attractive tattooed dick because I _was bored_!” Niall shouts. He receives a scandalized glare from the woman entering the store with two small children but Niall can't bring himself to care.

Zayn is about to reply, but before he even says anything Niall is up in his face again, acting like it's Zayn that's being cornered against bags of salt, not vice versa.

“Zayn, I fucking _loved_ you!” Niall screams. Yet another confession he hadn't meant to spill, but who the hell cares, it's out there now.

Niall is glaring at him again but Zayn can't focus on anything but the pounding of his chest and the angry splutters of Niall's breath against his face.

“Niall...” He says dumbly. “I think I love you too.”

“No.” Niall says before the words are barely out of Zayn's mouth. “No, fuck you” He shoves Zayn's shoulder back. He needs space, needs to not be cornered against a wall of salt and Zayn's muscular arms right now.

Zayn lets himself be shoved aside, a look of hurt spreading across his face as he sees Niall's eyes watering.

Niall can't help it his emotions are fucked right now. He feels like a freaking teenage girl on her period, eyes blurring and face burning. “Zayn you left.” Niall says and it feels like broken glass to Zayn's ears.

“You're always fucking leaving! Do you even realize the effect that has on others? On me? I try and call you to say sorry and you send _Liam_ over to tell me that you don't want to talk.” Niall rubs his eyes. “God, you're such a child.”

“I know.” He says after awhile of listening to Niall's dry sobs.

He catches a glimpse of Ed's ginger hair by the registers. “HUG HIM” Ed mouths after he's sent another pained look from Zayn. He looks hesitantly between Ed and Niall, afraid that any physical contact will have the blond running.

He inhales. “I'm sorry Niall. I shouldn't have left you after that, I was just being stupid and not dealing well.” He prays to god Niall won't punch him as he hesitantly reaches out to touch lay a hand on Niall's cheek. He trails his hand down the side of his face and brings Niall's jaw upwards with the pads of his fingers.

“I missed you, asshole.” Niall sniffs. He puts his own hand over Zayn's, making sure it didn't leave his skin.

Niall leans in and Zayn presses their lips together in the chaste kiss he might have been waiting his whole life for.

“Please don't leave again.”

Zayn holds on tightly to the sides of Niall's face and whispers “Don't worry, I won't.”

They kiss gently until Niall pushes away. “Want to go home?” He asks.

Zayn cracks a smile for the first time in awhile.

-

They're a mess of sweaty limbs and ragged breathing when Niall unlocks his door and shoves them both inside the flat.

Zayn pushes Niall against the drywall and they kiss slow and romantically like it was meant to be. He chucks his snapback to the couch and pulls Zayn to the bedroom.

There are no words, just the merging of their breaths as Zayn kisses down Niall's neck and sheds both of their t-shirts to the floor. They collide against another on the bed, Niall's back hitting the mattress as Zayn lowers himself onto Niall. in a desperate movement Niall thrusts his hips forward to meet Zayn's hard-on and Zayn can't help his arms buckling as he pants out needy breaths against Niall's open mouth.

They aren't even unclothed yet and Niall feels like he's going to explode if Zayn keeps up with the methodical thrusting of his jean-clad cock against Niall's boner. He bites messy at Zayn's maroon lips, coating them with wetness before finding his way to unbuckling the man's belt.

Zayn kicks his own jeans off and then sets to getting Niall naked. The pants are yanked down to his ankles and Niall discards them onto the floor. Zayn pushes Niall back to the sheets and hitches his fingers under the waistband of Niall's boxers.

Without a word he's kissing the blond open mouthed and spreading his fingers around the base of Niall's dick.

“Fuuuck, Zayn.” Niall gasps loudly and Zayn isn't even sure if that was a compliment or request.

He gives a muffled moan in reply and frowns when Niall breaks the kiss. “There's lube in the top drawer.” He pants.

Zayn squeezes a sizable amount of the lubricant in his hands and chucks the bottle to the side.

“Turn around babe,” He whispers pretty in Niall's ear.

Niall obeys and presses his face against the pillows as Zayn wiggles a lubed finger into Niall's tightening hole. It's followed suit by another and soon Niall is gasping against the mattress as Zayn scissors him open with three slickened fingers.

“Shitt” He's thrusting back on Zayn's knuckle deep digits as they massage his prostate.

“You're so spread for me Niall” Zayn whispers in awe and pulls out his dripping fingers.

He gives his own dick a few lazy strokes before rolling on a condom and spreading open Niall's ass cheeks with his palms. He lines his cock up with the pink hole and nudges the tip inside.

Zayn and Niall moan loudly and messy as Zayn's thrusts quicken and deepen. He leans Niall's pale back and kisses the back of his neck, hands intertwining themselves with Niall's and suddenly this is the most intimate thing he's ever done with another person.

His thrusts intensify and he can tell they are both close by the streams of curses flooding out of Niall's mouth.

“Shit babe, I'm gonna come,” Niall shudders out.

Zayn pulls all the way out before slamming back inside Niall's ass, hard. He moves his hands to stoke Niall through his orgasm. He draws a series of short and loud moans out of Niall when he presses his thumb flat against the head of Niall's cock and rubs messy, wet circles around the tip.

Niall comes into his hand and he's too preoccupied with his oncoming orgasm to care that he's making a mess of Niall's hips with his cum-coated fingers.

“Fuck, Niall” He pants before he comes hard, gripping tight onto Niall's hips and thrusting balls-deep into his asshole as Niall wiggles back on his cock and helps Zayn ride out his orgasm.

Zayn collapses on the mattress and lets Niall pull him in for a lazy kiss.

“I love you” he mumbles and snakes his arms around Niall's waist.

They stay in another's arms listening to each other's breathing until Niall glances at his alarm clock and realizes the time.

“Crap. Zayn, I gotta go to work in like an hour.” He mumbles.

“Mh. Okay, let's get you cleaned up.”

“Join me for a shower?” Niall asks.

Zayn nods. “Definitely.” He kisses Niall one last time before they stumble to the bathroom.

“So am I allowed to come with you? I honestly miss Louis' pub. So much classier than the ones downtown.” Zayn says. He massages shampoo into Niall's sculpt.

Niall lets the warm water drip down his chest. “Yup, you're coming. Louis and Harry missed you... even if they never said anything about it to me.”

::

“-and the milk Louis! He didn't even flipping buy me any milk. I haven't even heard from him since this morning- when he promised to pick up the milk! God I love that man like a brother but I cannot stand him lately.” Liam downs another shot. “Always getting high and moping 'round. S'like he's an emotional teenager and I'm the mom that has to pay for therapy.”

Louis gives his friend a pat on the back. “Oh I feel ya mate. Niall drinks more than he sells. He's lucky I love him, or else he'd be fired in a second.”

Liam sighs. “I'd have Zayn talk to him, but he honestly never leaves the house. Except for when he gets milk and forgets to bring it back to the flat, that wanker.”

Louis nods. “I think they just need to have angry sex. Or make sweet love. I don't know, whatever restores the balance because I need Niall to bring back the life 'round here.”

“Oh speak of the devil. Zayn you arsehole, where's my milk!?” Liam yells and then does a double-check when he sees the hand Niall has snaked around his waist.

Louis' grin mimics the one Niall has spread across his face.

“Hot damn, look at that.” Harry whistles from where he's sitting in a booth reading _The Perks of Being a Wallflower_.

“Hey” Zayn smiles.

“Zaynie! Haven't seen you in awhile.” Louis says, hoping over the counter. “I see you found your way out of the closet. Congrats~” He wiggles his way over to give Zayn a peck on the cheek.

“I think we should have celebratory drinks!” Harry chirps from his booth. “To the gay love between Niall and Zayn”

“I second that” Liam calls.

“I'll grab the beer” Niall smiles and gives Zayn a peck on the lips before literally skipping over to the alcohol cellar.

-

-

-

_fin_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ITS FINALLY FUCKING OVER EVERYONE GO HOME.
> 
> No but seriously, this was way longer than I planned I'm really sorry for any trouble I put you through.   
>  I really loved reading everyone's feedback on this. Means a lot <3
> 
> *whispers* I'm about halfway through writing a prostitute au, stay tuned. 
> 
> bye loves.


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